


Ever Fallen In Love

by Marasa



Category: RedLetterMedia RPF
Genre: AU, Angst, Asexual Character, Confessions, Cuddling, Dry Humping, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, M/M, Mutual Pining, Praise Kink, Protectiveness, Punk, Recreational Drug Use, References to Depression, Scent Kink, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:47:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 60,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21821182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marasa/pseuds/Marasa
Summary: They were so different. They shouldn’t have worked this well together.
Relationships: Mike/Jay
Comments: 106
Kudos: 79





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty much Sid from Gorilla Interrupted is like my favorite Mike ‘look’, so that’s how this fic came about. I hope you enjoy this multi-chapter endeavor of mine! Comments and kudos make a world of difference for the long haul, so don’t hesitate to show your support! Thanks again! Enjoy :)

Not once when Mike first met Jay did he ever think Jay would eventually be in his apartment helping him dye his hair.

They were so different. They shouldn’t have worked this well together. 

Jay was nerdy, teeth too big for his mouth and suffering from an initially shy disposition where he stood in the corner of the room after Mike’s set at a dingy bar, that has since closed, called Baxter’s. 

Mike was loud, irreverent and admittedly a little too frequently drunk during that time in his life, a habit Jay had helped him cut down on a year later. 

They were on opposite ends of a majority of spectrums and on the night they met, they had been on opposite ends of a smoky bar.

“Who is that guy?” Mike had asked his then drummer, Laurel, at the bar. He would eventually get in a fight with her after their shared pursuit of a cute punk chick who came to a lot of their shows. Laurel would ultimately get the girl and move to Portland with her, no hard feelings in the end but a few shared tears they swore to never mention again. 

“One of Garrett’s friends?” she said. “I think?”

“Brother,” his then friend but future enemy, Clive said. “John’s brother.”

“Who’s John?”

“Garrett’s girlfriend, Danica’s, friend.”

“So a stranger.”

“Hey, he came to your show,” Clive said. “Show some respect.”

“In that case, he’s my new best friend.” Mike shot a hand up high in the air, studded leather jacket squeaking. “Hey! Best friend!”

The new kid startled at the obnoxious yell. He looked up, eyes widening when he saw it was him who Mike was making eye contact with. He snapped his eyes down to the beer in his hand, appearing simultaneously mortified and annoyed. 

Mike smirked.

Mike could not describe what it was about Jay that drew him in. He thought it was too much.

Once they were actual best friends, Mike would embarrass Jay by telling the story of how they met to his newest bandmates, curious as to who this guy was who was hanging around so frequently on and off stage but who never picked up an instrument. 

Mike would start really dramatic and comical but then as the tale went on and his jokes ran thin, he’d sober up into a more heartfelt and much too real story that ended up being uncomfortable for all parties listening.

“Jay was, different. But still it was like he was familiar. Like I’d known him forever, but when I looked at him it was like I seeing him for the first time…” It would be awkwardly quiet and then Mike would clear his throat and put on that punk, nonchalance bravado and spit, “Get used to him. He’s sticking around.”

The night they met, Mike had tried mingling with the usual attendees of his band’s shows but he found himself distracted by that guy he’d never seen before who was still standing by the wall, taking his phone out every now and then in an attempt to look busy before pocketing it again.

“Hey, best friend. You’re still here.”

Aforementioned Best Friend jumped. He licked over the slight jut of teeth poking out from his lips. “I think you’re mistaking me for someone else. I’m not your best friend.”

Mike slammed a hand over his heart with a pained gasp. “Cold!”

Best Friend gave a small smile before looking back down at his beer. 

“Clive told me you came to our show.” 

“Yeah.”

“Thanks for your support—…”

He blinked at him. “Oh! Jay.”

“Jay. You coming out and supporting us makes you my best friend.” Mike gestured around with his drink. “We’re all friends here. If you’re here, you’re meant to be here. You get me?”

“Sure.”

“I haven’t seen you around. Do you usually go out to shows?”

Jay shook his head. “If I’m honest, I only came here because I got a coupon for free beer.”

An ache flashed in Mike’s chest at that confession about not caring about Mike’s music and Mike remembered how he had wanted to burst out in laughter at the feeling because it was so unexpected and so new and what did this mean? 

Surely something that came once in a lifetime.

“Bars give out free beer?” Mike said. “Why do I never get coupons like that?”

It would be poor management and a lack of renovation that would do in Baxter’s, but they would joke that it was all the free beer Jay was drinking up, literally sucking Baxter’s dry until it had no choice but to close. 

At first Jay was criminally quiet. He was shy and over thought every little word. And then Mike had mentioned a shitty B-movie and Jay had lit up.

Suddenly Jay was talking his ear off and they were both asking, _‘Have you seen this? Have you seen that?’_

“Have you ever seen the sequel?” Jay asked when Mike brought up an obscure horror movie they both were fond of.

“No! I didn’t even know there was a sequel. What the fuck?”

“I have it! You should come over and watch it.”

Jay quieted then, like he had said something he shouldn’t have. In reality, he was nervous and intimidated by this jobless, non-college educated, loudmouth punk, who he was sure would never want to spend a second of time outside of this bar with him. 

He was unaware of the fondness growing within Mike for him.

At that time, they terrified each other. 

They would never admit as much now but when they had looked at each other, something deep in their souls clicked into place.

“Yeah, dude, that’d be awesome,” Mike said. 

Their first conversation almost ended by Jay announcing that he had to go. His coupons for free beer were all used up and he had a physics test the next morning.

“Are you good to drive?” Mike asked after discovering it was five free beers that Jay had been promised. 

“I walked. I live in the dorms a few blocks away.”

Jay was a senior at this time. He would finish the following spring with a degree he didn’t care about and that would not land him a worthwhile career. 

“I’ll walk you home,” Mike said. “If you want. I’m kinda done with this place.”

Jay seemed surprised but agreed, and they walked back to Jay’s dorm, talking about movies and laughing over Mike’s stupid jokes. 

That night at the dorm building’s front door, Mike had given Jay his phone number and soon enough Jay was inviting him over to watch movies and then later inviting him out to early screenings he got emails about through his university’s newsletter. 

Though these events were exclusive to college students, Mike would put on a show of saying how he forgot his ID back at his dorm, _damn!_ Jay would have to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, but he couldn’t help but snicker when Mike put his hands together and gave the most dramatic expression of gratitude as he burbled, “Thank you, thank you.” 

They took turns paying for the snacks, considering they were both struggling financially in their own ways, one of them chasing their dreams and the other paying to forget about theirs. 

Their little movie get-togethers transformed into a weekly occurrence, then an every few day occurrence until finally it was an every evening occurrence.

And somehow Mike convinced Jay to come out to more shows. Not just his, though Jay would admit they were his favorites, but other punk shows. And they still weren’t exactly Jay’s scene but Jay tried for Mike and Mike appreciated it. 

Two and a half years later, and here they were, Mike seated on a stool, shirtless, in front of the clouded bathroom mirror and Jay pulling on a black pair of latex gloves.

“Hurry up,” Mike said, scratching his nose when the smell of hair bleach lingered long after he had washed it out.

“Shut up.” Jay was wearing one of Mike’s old band shirts, already stained with bleach and dye from their previous sessions. He peeled the foil top from the jar of green dye on the dirty countertop. “You look like you have noodles on your head.”

“‘Noodle head.’ Thanks for the name of the band’s next album.”

“Actually it’s the name of my next screenplay, so you can’t have it. I’ll sue you if you try to use it.”

“Oh yeah? What’s it about? Your screenplay?”

“An asshole who thinks he looks cool by destroying his hair with toxic chemicals.”

“Hey, watch it.” 

Their eyes met in the mirror. They shared a small smile seemingly private between them, just another exclusive element of their already unusual relationship.

Mike’s friends described it as a secret language between them.

Jay scooped up the green goop from the plastic container into his rubbered hands. He painted it on the blonde mess atop Mike’s head so the forest green dye covered every split-end strand. Jay’s fingers threaded through his hair and stroked along his scalp from the crown of his head to the back of his neck. 

Mike erupted regularly into goosebumps down his entire bare chest, nipples peaking and the faint trail of hair under his belly button standing erect at the relaxing chill coursing through him. Soon, his eyes were falling closed with the weight of exhaustion result from frequent late night shows and the parties following them.

He probably got home at four in the morning last night and he was still feeling it. 

Mike dozed as Jay’s fingers combed through his hair, no longer applying dye but working it in even though Mike told him that he didn’t need to do that for it to work. His head nodded back, further and further, until it finally came to rest against Jay’s stomach. 

Warmth radiated from the fabric of his borrowed shirt, already beginning to smell like him: vanilla body wash, a fading spritz of weak cologne and something uniquely him, undefinable. 

_ERRGGHH!_

Mike startled at the roar of Jay’s empty stomach against his ear. 

“Jesus…” When he lifted his head, a damp spot of green dye colored Jay’s shirt.

“I haven’t eaten all day,” Jay said. “Are you gonna take me out to eat?”

Mike hummed, rubbed the heels of his hands against eyes. “Is it my turn to pay?”

“Yeah.”

“If it’s my turn to pay, then we’re going to Terry’s.”

“Sure. Now wash this shit out of your hair so we can go.”

Never would he have thought they would be as close as this when he first laid eyes on that geeky college student after free beer and not at all interested in the too fast, too loud music that was Mike’s life.

It felt surreal a lot of the time. A dream. Jay would probably say something like it was reminiscent of a David Lynch film but David Lynch films lacked whatever this unspoken warmth they had for each other behind their bickering. 

This time Mike allowed himself an embarrassing smile as he stood from his stool. 

He pulled back the tattered shower curtain and laughed as Jay gasped and exclaimed, “Mike! Look at the shower! It’s like Oscar the Grouch fucking exploded in there!”


	2. Chapter 2

“Jurassic World fucking sucks, what do you mean?”

“It’s not bad!” Mike said, because this was the hill he had decided to die on.

They were walking down the street in the direction of Terry’s. They had just gotten off the warm city bus and the cold was relentless. Their breath was visible in front of their mouths. The wind pushing at them in random gusts promised snow. 

They would have really been feeling the chill if only their conversation had not been so heated.

“I can’t believe you,” Jay said. “This is you being a contrarian. Again.”

“I’m not, though,” Mike said. “It’s a good movie.”

Jay stopped walking. 

Mike turned on his heel and began walking backwards, his back to the wind and his sights on Jay, who had his hands pushed deeply in the pockets of his thin black coat decorated with buttons from the many punk shows he had been to now. 

“I mean,” Mike said, “it’s schlock, but that’s the whole appeal.”

Jay shook his head. “I don’t know you.”

Mike laughed so loudly, it echoed between the cold brick buildings. 

Jay tucked his chin to his chest in defense against the wind as he began walking again. Mike slowed and then stopped, waiting for him with a smile as bright as the moon high above.

“It’s gettin’ fucking cold, isn’t it?” Mike said as Jay passed him, his shoulder nudging Mike’s to which Mike followed the movement and returned facing forward.

“It’s gonna snow,” Jay said regretfully with a glance at the clouds congregating in the dark sky. 

Terry’s Taco Shack was their safe haven.

It was a warm shield from the cold steadily becoming blistering outside. They sat in a booth worn by too many asses and huddled over yellow and red plastic baskets each holding three soft tacos, Mike’s with fajita meat and Jay’s with fried shrimp.

“When’d you do that?” Jay asked around his mouthful of taco.

“Hm?

Jay nodded to his fingers. 

The black nail polish across Mike’s fingernails was mostly chipped. There were obvious sheet marks on both his thumb and pinky. His cuticles were painted as was the skin on the sides of his nails. 

“The other night. You can tell how drunk I was.”

“Have you ever seen those art nail pieces?” Jay said. “My sister’s crazy about them. She’s tried a couple of times to do it but they come out super shitty. Here.”

Jay pulled up a few pictures on his phone and turned his screen so Mike could see them too.

“She tried to do a horror movie theme for Halloween, and I told her to try Jason’s mask but it looks more like a, uh…” 

“Potato,” Mike supplied. 

“Pretty much.”

A message popped up on the screen with a ding. 

_ Hey Jay. I know you had tomorrow off but can you fill in for Ciara? We’ll need you here from 8am to 6pm. _

Mike groaned in sympathy, then took another bite of his taco. “Tell them to fuck off.”

“I need the money,” Jay murmured, already texting his boss back. 

But at what cost, Mike wanted to say. 

When Mike met Jay, Jay’s dreams had yet to entirely die. He still had that sliver of hope of one day doing something worthwhile.

He wanted to be a director. It took a long time for him to admit it to Mike, still unsure of him at some capacity. But eventually Jay sat him down and showed him some of his old ‘movies’ he had made in his first year of college.

Some of them were comprehensible but most of them were surreal and abstract, using camera tricks and cheap effects that bent reality and created for a hypnotizing series of imagery. It was like if some indie hipster had made the videotape from the  _ The Ring.  _

Mike had watched, transfixed. He would tap Jay sitting on the couch next to him every now and then, saying, “Look, it’s you!” and then Jay would squirm and look down bashfully and threaten to turn it off if he kept talking.

Jay looked so different in those videos. Younger, of course, but rounder and softer. His teeth were much more crooked and his hair was short. Mike had smiled because the Jay on the screen was still so familiar to him, not at all a stranger from the clean and proper person Jay was now. 

Jay had been so red when the movie finished, Mike was sure he was going to explode, or maybe implode, whichever came first.

In exchange and to save him any further embarrassment, Mike showed Jay some songs he had written when he was a young lad more concerned with the unfairness of the school system and never ending homework than much more important social issues. 

Jay had laughed as he read over the weathered notebooks and as he listened to Mike attempt to sing the badly-spelled lyrics but at the end of it, he had Mike promise to never show him anything like that again.

“What do you need the money for?” Mike said. “I’ll give you the money.”

Jay gave him a deflated stare as if asking, ‘ _ Really?’ _

“What do I need money for?” Jay repeated. “A vacation to Milan.”

This struck Mike a little sad because there was a degree of truth in it. Mike had seen the odd documentary or travel show about Milan in Jay’s ‘Previously Watched’ section on Netflix. Never had either of them taken time off since they met; they simply couldn’t afford to.

“I need money,” Jay said, “so I can live my life. My shitty, little life.”

Mike lifted his cup. “I’ll cheers to that.”

Jay rolled his eyes but raised his cup to Mike’s. 

Mike wondered what they looked like to the other patrons.

There was a group of college students in the corner, mostly men, but the energy emitted from them was much different than the energy at their own table.

They could easily sit in silence, murmur quietly together without any need to brag about the latest chick they ‘smashed’ or flex their biceps.

Jay didn’t fit in at college. This was especially disappointing because he really thought he would. 

He felt very much alone before he met Mike.

“Are you gonna come back to mine after this?”

Mike had some newly thrifted VHSs and a six pack of beer. 

“No,” Jay said, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “I need to get home.”

Mike tried not to wilt. “Expecting someone?”

Jay arched an eyebrow, shrugged. Mike knew he was joking; he could see the tell-tale twinkle of sarcasm in his eyes that most others missed. Mike considered himself lucky for Jay to have given him the time of day so he could have the chance to decipher it.

“No,” Jay said, “I have to work on the screenplay.” 

Mike still didn’t know what Jay’s screenplay was about.

It had come as a surprise to see him creating something he obviously cared so much about after a creative dry spell directly caused by fast-moving university life and the subsequent depressive hopelessness when considering following one’s dreams.

It was like a fog he was finally emerging from and though he’d never admit it aloud, Jay considered Mike to be that light guiding him back to what he once considered so important before school chewed up his spirit. 

So he started writing a screenplay and though Mike expressed intense interest and asked a million questions when Jay had told him, Jay refused to give him any information until it was completely done and edited.

“I’ll let you read it,” Jay had said, “but only once it’s done. Promise me you won’t sniff around and read it before I’m done.”

Mike held up both his hands. “I promise I will only read it once it’s done.”

Jay bringing it up now only made Mike want to read it more, at least see what he was working on currently, but Mike kept quiet and respected Jay’s artistic boundaries.

The Yelp reviews for Terry’s Taco Shack were notoriously bad; everything from rats, food poisoning, bad service and an encounter with a large lizard in the bathroom, which may or may not have been an iguana (though that was probably made up, right? Iguanas in Wisconsin? Surely not). The point was that the restaurant received bad ratings despite the fact that the tacos, when they weren’t damning someone to the toilet for an entire sleepless night, were downright delicious. The prices were more than affordable, the staff was hilarious and some of them even sold Mike weed, which they hid in a paper empanada bag when Mike added “extra lettuce” to his order and slipped them another twenty. 

Jay was like Terry’s. 

Because if people could give each other Yelp reviews, Jay would be receiving a— in Mike’s opinion,  _ unwarranted _ — terrible review. Mike had heard people at and outside of shows call Jay a poser, pathetic, awkward and high-and-mighty, all of which had Mike informing them with varying levels of curtness to not talk about his best friend like that. Jay had even made a girl cry once by accident by not returning her advances. She was admittedly very intoxicated, but still she found it a shame that she had wasted her night on someone so “stuck up and pompous.” 

But they didn’t know Jay like Mike knew Jay. They didn’t know that Jay actually worried about what to wear to his first few punk shows because he wasn’t sure if he’d be ‘accepted.’ They didn’t know that he didn’t talk to a lot of people in social situations because in his mind, he was still that scrawny nerd with weird movie tastes and crooked teeth. They didn’t know that Jay could make you laugh until your sides hurt or that he had serious talent in filmmaking or that his smile could stop your breath because you knew he meant it. 

Jay might have been a three in their eyes but Jay was a high nine, dammit, ten, in Mike’s eyes. 

Okay, eleven.

“If you could give me a Yelp rating and review,” Mike said, “what would you give me?”

Jay took a sip of his soda as he considered the question. His cheeks still bitten a soft red from the cold.

“A six.”

Mike’s eyebrows shot up to his green hairline. “A six? On looks? Or what?”

“The whole thing.”

“‘The whole thing.’ God, you’re brutal.”

They looked at each other with a gaze testing the other’s seriousness and then they were breaking and cracking up almost too loudly.

“Okay, okay, fine,” Jay said. “Your taste in music is a three-“

“Hey!”

“-but your ability to  _ play _ music is a solid eight. Eight point five.”

Mike smirked. It meant a lot coming from Jay. Maybe it was because Jay was so up front and real about stuff that you never thought he was lying. 

That’s what so many people hated about him.

That’s what Mike loved about him.

Jay continued. “The whole attire- an eight.”

“An eight!? That high? That’s surprising.”

“Why’s that surprising?”

“Because I look like a leather-clad hooligan, or so I’ve been told.” By teachers, authority, pretty much all adults growing up. A lot still. 

Mike’s parents believed he was the devil.

He was too much for them to deal with as a rambunctious kid with a bad attitude and a habit of causing trouble, but the second he donned dyed hair and black boots and began kissing boys as frequently as he did girls, they were certain he was the antichrist.

It was a good laugh on the rare occasion it came up in conversation, but he tried not to think about it too much; he hated that their opinions still hurt him on some level.

“Well, yeah,” Jay said, attempting to dip his soft taco in a container of chipotle ranch. The paper bottom of the basket was slick with something wet, maybe grease, though maybe not, causing the plastic sauce container to slide on the first attempt and then the next two. Mike reached over and held it still for him. “But you make it look good.”

Mike smiled devilishly. “Is that right?”

Jay huffed and averted his eyes out the window, distractedly picking his nails in his lap. 

“So it all averages out,” Mike said.

“Yeah.”

“Not too shabby,” he said and then burped loud enough to draw the attention of the next table. Mike waffles his eyebrows at them and they looked away with whispers of, “ _ Gross.” _

Jay reached over the table to take Mike’s last taco. 

Jay never outright asked for whatever Mike had, would just grab for it and take it like it was his own and Mike was just holding it for him. Pretty much all of the little Mike owned he subconsciously considered Jay’s. 

If Jay demanded the breath out of his lungs, there was no doubt Mike would give it to him. 

Jay took a bite of Mike’s taco and immediately winced at the spice of the salsa drizzled over it. He reached for Mike’s drink now that his own was empty and gulped at it hurriedly.

Mike watched as Jay’s Adam’s apple bobbed with each swallow. 

He cleared his throat; damn cold weather.

_ Brrring! _

Mike’s phone rang on the table. He slid his finger across the cracked screen and brought it to his ear, sucking the pinprick of blood from the pad of his index as he spoke.

“Hey what’s up, Donnie? Just getting some food right now. Why?... _ What!? _ ” Jay raised a curious eyebrow. “You’re kidding me. Fuck, Donnie, say you’re joking. Please.  _ Ugh _ .”

Mike deflated, literally, disappearing out of sight as he sunk down onto his side to lay on the plastic bench. 

Jay continued to eat his taco, relatively unfazed by Mike’s dramatics. He jumped, however, when Mike shot out a hand and took hold of his calf under the table. Jay cursed, nearly choking, and kicked his leg in surprise. Mike peeked up from the table’s edge, smile hidden but mischievous eyes shining.

“Yeah, yeah, Donnie,” he said as he returned upright. “Well I’m always a call away, dude. Yeah. Good luck to you. Bye.”

Mike hung up the phone. He drug his hands down his face. 

“Why is it that every time I plan something, it just totally blows up in my face? And not even in a sexy way, like, in a gross, disgusting way. My mouth was open and life didn’t even have the decency to give me a heads up before spraying my face with hot, gooey reality.”

Jay grimaced. “Mike, I’m eating.”

“Donnie’s out.”

“What?”

“Donnie’s out of the band. He quit.”

“Just now?”

“Yup.”

“Good for him.”

Mike glared.

“I mean.” Jay wiped his mouth with his napkin, trying to hide his smirk behind it. “Sucks.”

It really did suck because this meant Mike would have to put up flyers and hold auditions. It would mean totally getting to know someone all over again and try to work with them and-

Mike didn’t want to think about it right now. 

He needed to find someone ASAP, because registration for Battle of the Bands was next week.

It was only the biggest event for the music scene in Milwaukee. Last year’s winner was already signed at a B-list record label, though that was purely coincidence and had nothing to do with the influence or the acclaim of their ‘win.’

Still, Mike wanted to win.

And he just knew it was their year. Something was aligning just right, something so much bigger than him, and he just knew it was for Battle of the Bands.

His eyes widened in realization. Mike looked up.

“Jay,” he said, a total seriousness lacing his voice, “you could take Donnie’s place. I could teach you how to play bass.”

Jay blinked. “Uh. No.”

“Why not? We’re desperate, Jay!”

“You’ll find someone else.”

But Mike didn’t want someone else. 

He wanted his best friend beside him on this endeavor. He wanted to make something together with him, to literally form something tangible out of nothing, just because they had a shared desire, a shared love for creating something. 

Mike gave a deep sigh. 

A patron jumping onto a table and screaming about a roach scurrying across the floor was their cue to leave. They rose with full stomachs and a lot on their minds, and prepared themselves the best they could to face the cold. 

“Oh, grab that bag,” Mike said in reference to the small paper bag printed with ‘ _ Warm yourself with a caramel empanada!’  _ on the table.

Jay grabbed it, looking at Mike with an unimpressed look when he caught a whiff of the contents inside. 

“What? That’s twenty dollars! No way am I leaving it behind.” He took it from Jay, smelling it discreetly before tucking it into his pocket. “Are you sure you don’t want to come over?”

“I need to write.”

Mike patted his pocket.  _ “Inspiration.” _

Jay shook his head. 

The coldest weather always spurred within Mike a kind of warmth that melted his heart in an almost painful way. When he caught the sight of the moon or felt the brush of his arm against someone he cared about’s, it really felt like his heart would shatter into countless beautiful pieces. 

Mike smiled for no reason and a million reasons all at once. 

Fat snowflakes fluttered under the orange glow of the streetlights as soon as they reached the bus stop. The wind blew and even in the thick shield of his leather jacket, Mike shivered.

Jay’s sweater and jacket combo did little to shield him from the offensive drop in temperature. His teeth chattered together, hands stuffed in his pockets uncomfortably as another wind feeling like subzero needles pricked their skin. 

Mike unzipped his leather jacket. Jay turned toward him at the sound and didn’t hesitate to step into the space revealed when Mike held it open.

There was no doubt that Jay would have refused to do so had someone been waiting here with them, but it was so late and they were completely alone, only them, under the streetlight marking the stop for a bus still too far out.

Sometimes it really felt like they were the only two on the planet. 

Jay pressed incredibly close against Mike’s front. He rested his cheek against Mike’s collarbone and sandwiched his frigid hands between their chests. His shivering quelled slightly as he nestled closer to the warmth Mike radiated but still Jay sucked in an adorable shuttered breath going,  _ ‘Sphsphsph.’ _

Mike held his jacket closed around Jay in what ended up technically being a hug. Jay gave no protest so Mike held him tightly and became his shield against the brutal wind, which Mike didn’t even feel as he melted the snow peppering Jay’s hair with his breath. 

Up above, the streetlight shined almost as brightly as the moon, setting the snow ablaze with golden light so each snowflake appeared like a falling star. 

The world was a very cold place, they realized, but under Jay’s hands, Mike’s heart melted.


	3. Chapter 3

Mike was the type to need closure.

In truth, he was an emotional guy who wasn’t as apathetic as he seemed or at least when it came to people he really cared about. Failed romantic relationships, disintegrating friendships, explosive falling outs— he had seen them all to their bitter, definitive end.

His relationship with his parents was no different. Mike knew it would be cleaner to gradually cut off contact without getting into the specifics of what their problem was with him but he couldn’t take the ‘what if’s’ or the undefinable status of his standing with his family.

So he swallowed his pride and returned home after a year to ask if they were truly done with him. They did not greet him with open arms and warm sentiments. His father yelled at him to explain what the hell he was doing here and if he thought he could just come and go as he pleased. His mother had cried as she lamented over what a disappointment he was. His uncle threatened to lay him out on the floor if he didn’t leave this goddamn house, all while his aunt threw pillows and magazines and tv remotes at him, accusing him of destroying his parents’ hopes for a stable son and future grandchildren.

That Thanksgiving had been a mess.

Donnie’s ‘resignation’ via phone didn’t sit satisfactory with Mike. He wanted to go to Donnie’s to have him tell it to him straight and to his face, and Mike would have had it not been that Mike wasn’t exactly sure where Donnie lived anymore. 

Donnie was Donnie, a stranger even after four years of knowing him. He always had been scared and finicky about being in a band. There had been times he’d taken hold of Mike’s shoulder and told him maybe it was time for some more schooling, huh? Or maybe a construction gig, or go apprentice under a mechanic?

“The music’s fun,” Donnie would say, “but for how long? There’s gotta be somethin’ else, man. We can’t be doin’ this when we’re sixty.”

“What about Richie Ramone? Jello Biafra? Paul McCartney?”

“C’mon,” Donnie laughed. “They come through town and you know you’re not seein’ them.”

They had been on different pages for a long time. 

Mike scaled the icy, metal steps up to the second floor of the apartment building four blocks from his own. He slipped twice but thankfully avoided any accidents. He only had to give a few wilted knocks before the door was flying open.

“Heyya, Mike!” Jack was bright as always, perpetually optimistic even as Mike stood slumped and freezing outside the apartment door. “Come on in, buddy!”

Jack gave him a pat on the back as Mike moved past him and into the warm two-room apartment. 

“Hey, Mike.”

Rich was sat on the couch, a gaming controller in his hands and his eyes set on the screen. His practice drum set was positioned in the corner of the room. 

Mike grunted dejectedly as he sat down and immediately melted into a puddle of melancholy on his drummer’s couch.

“What’s up?” Rich said.

“Donnie called me.”

“Yeah,” and it sounded like Rich already knew what he was talking about.

“He already talked to you?”

Rich shrugged, nodded. Mike sighed.

“Mike!” Jack’s cheerful exclamation came from the kitchen. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in awhile! When’s the last time we saw each other?”

“I dunno,” Mike grumbled. “Our last show? Edgar’s house party?”

“I didn’t go to that one. I had a birthday party that night. But I heard good things!”

Jack was going to clown college with aspirations of eventually joining Cirque du Soleil. For now, though, he settled for children’s birthday parties and strangely elite conferences devoted to balloon art.

It was a lifestyle for Jack and Mike respected that.

There was a row of balloon dogs balanced atop the television and a tall, abstract balloon sculpture by the entrance of the hallway. There were sometimes balloons hidden in the creases between cushions. Mike learned this once when he sat down on the couch with his studded jacket and was met with a startling pop of an exploded balloon sculpted into the form of a naked mole rat. 

“So what’s going on tonight?” Jack said as the microwave beeped. “Here to talk some new music with my ol’ buddy Rich?”

Mike’s hands were buried in his pockets. His feet felt heavy, his boots making it feel like he was bolted to the floor. He wasn’t sure he could answer Jack but his jacket collar had fallen ever so slightly over his nose and offered a familiar and comforting whiff of hair gel and warmth of the man no longer curled up against his chest.

“Donnie quit.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jack said regretfully. “He seemed pretty upset when he was over here.”

“Dammit, Jack!”

“What?”

_ “Greeat,”  _ Mike droned as he sunk further into the couch. “Of course he came here instead of to me, y’know, the leader of the band.”

“Don’t you dare start sulking!” Rich admonished. “I can’t stand it when you get sad and moody. Go do that at your own place and leave me out of it.”

But it was too late; Mike was already deflating like someone had stuck him with a pin. 

“Geez, Mike, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Jack entered view again. “I just thought he already talked to you-“

Rich hissed through his teeth at his roommate. “Shut. Up.” 

“Okay, okay,” Jack said as he bustled back out of sight. “You know what always makes me feel better, Mike? Hold on right there!”

For a second, Mike wondered why the news was hitting him like this now but then he thought that was stupid because he knew exactly why. 

He sighed out of his nose. Mike wished Jay wasn’t busy writing.

Rich gave him a glance before sighing himself at his bold friend’s unnatural silence. “Mike-“

“You know how I am,” Mike said because Rich did know exactly how he was and how much separation bothered him. They had known each other since they were twelve, had gone to school together and had developed their same love for music together. “Did he say why? He would have told you more than he told me. I know that for a fact.”

“C’mon, Mike.”

“Am I wrong?”

Rich paused his video game. It became quiet except for the sound of the microwave and the refrigerator opening and closing behind them. 

“He said it was just a difference in interests. His heart wasn’t in it. Everyone could tell that much. He looked fucked off for the past several shows.”

Mike stared down at the rip in his jeans he hadn’t noticed until right now. “Why did he leave, Rich?”

Mike’s best friend and drummer peeked over the back of the couch, then nodded in exhausted surrender at Mike. “And he said you weren’t taking enough risks.”

“What?” Mike said. “What the fuck does that mean!?”

“Donnie said, ‘Mike’s too comfortable.’ Quote, unquote. He said he couldn’t see it going anywhere. The band, the music, whatever.” Rich unpaused his game. “I said if it was fine for today, it was fine with me. He begged to differ.”

Risk? That’s what it was all about then?

Mike’s life was all a risk, though. The music, the pursuit of winning Battle of the Bands, the near joblessness he flirted with by picking up odd jobs.

What the hell was Donnie talking about?

Doubt crept into Mike’s mind. Maybe it was the truth that dawned on him. He  _ was _ a little indecisive with the sound, as were his wishes for the band. He wanted a harder sound but he also wanted something accessible and not too offputting, something that gave them a chance. He wanted some kind of fame but he didn’t want to sell out.

‘Risk.’ It suddenly felt personal. 

What about Mike himself refused to take risk? Surely not his appearance, though one could argue that he was playing it safe by falling into the cliche of what a punk was to look like: dyed hair, black leather, boots.

And what about what he really wanted from life? Talking to his parents again had been a risk and he had done it, but that had been so long ago. Did he want what they wanted from him, somewhere deep down? Did he want the financial stability and the quiet life and the marriage and all the shit that came with it? 

Since when had he turned into such a complacent coward? 

Mike wondered just how many of his truest desires he was hiding from himself. He had willingly cast a blindfold of numb compliance over his eyes, the same guy who screamed into microphones to not let society obscure your view of the world; what a hypocrite.

“Fuck Donnie,” Mike whispered in the midst of his identity crisis, but he didn’t know if he really meant it.

Jack came back into the living room with a mug in his hands. “Hot cocoa!” he announced with gusto. “And,  _ oh?  _ What’s that? Some whipped cream on top and a little bit of shaved chocolate? All for you, Mike!”

The ceramic warmed his wind bitten fingers now slightly trembling, his skin chronically chapped by a lack of lotion and the Wisconsin cold.

“How the fuck are we supposed to win Battle of the Bands now?” Mike asked, licking whipped cream from his lips. 

“We need to get a replacement. Soon. Sooner than soon,” Rich said. “You need to put out the word. Put out some fliers.”

“And you don’t have to do anything because you’re the drummer?”

Rich raised an eyebrow. “You said you were the leader of the band.”

It was getting late. Mike felt a little claustrophobic and paranoid with all these balloon animals staring at him. The flash of the television was giving him a headache. He just wanted to jack off in his own bed and sleep for eighteen hours. 

He stood and walked over to the kitchen. He passed off the half-empty mug to Jack with a nod of thanks, who took it with a considerate smile.

“Y’know, Mike,” Jack said, “maybe this whole Donnie thing is a blessing in disguise. Maybe you wouldn’t have won Battle of the Bands if he had stayed. Maybe whoever you find as Donnie’s replacement will be a million times better. No offense to Donnie, of course.”

There was still some white grease paint on Jack’s jaw. He almost looked tired but his good attitude prevented him from succumbing to the pissiness of a hard day’s work cartwheeling across stages and juggling flaming knives and making something awe-inspiring from thin, worthless rubber. 

“Hey, Jack,” Mike said.

“Hey, Mike.”

“What’s a risk you took today?”

Jack looked surprised. “Well,” he said, “I guess I took the risk of going through with a double layout after a shotty launch.”

“Did you land it?”

“Mostly.” Jack smiled. “But I don’t think that’s what’s important.”

Mike furrowed his brow.

“My wrist’s a little sore, but so what? There’s no better feeling than being upside down; a little wrist ache can’t change that. Flipping through the air, going too fast but being stable right here,” he tapped his diaphragm, “and just knowing that’s enough.” 

“It was worth it, then.”

Jack laughed. “You should’ve seen the way they were looking at me. They wanted to be in my place.  _ Weightless.  _ And I don’t blame them.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is longer than the previous chapters. I have so many favorite parts in this one, you don’t even know. It was just so much fun to write, so I hope you enjoy it too!

Sleep was a quick cure to most of life’s problems.

Mike arrived home feeling confused, downtrodden, exhausted, horny and just a little hungry. He came inside a dirty sock and was immensely grateful for the embrace of sleep that enveloped him before he could worry himself awake with thoughts of risk and the future success of his band. 

He slept well into the following day, each time barely blinking awake to finding himself in another extreme position as if he was battling with some unseen monster deep in his unconsciousness. It was the  _ ding _ of an incoming message that roused him from sleep at 1pm.

Mike returned upright from where his upper half was dangling off the side of his bed and reached for is phone so he could read Jay’s name and the message under it. 

_ I haven’t gotten a text from you today about how much you hate having to work, so I’m going to safely assume you’re still in bed _

Mike’s eyes were still too bleary with sleep, his fingers too tingly, so he tapped with a clumsy finger the microphone icon by the text box.

“I’m up, I’m up.” Mike yawned obnoxiously loud as he turned onto his stomach.

_ You don’t sound like you’re up _

_ You sound like shit _

“Thanks,” he grumbled groggily into his pillow. “I'm goin’ back ta sleep. I’ll tell ya all about my dreams when I wake up.”

_ Please don’t _

Mike was already half-asleep, mouth barely managing to form the slurred words falling off his tongue. “Nnnight, Jay...”

_ Goodnight lazy ass _

Dreams did come but they were more like meditations than any silly or sexy romp through dreamland. Pieces connected and clicked together in frightening coherence. 

_ Risk _ , the dream said,  _ can only be taken when desire has been identified.  _

Mike woke up at 3pm feeling rather spooky but he kept it to himself. 

He got dressed and went down to the library to print out some fliers, which he designed in record time given his frequent participation in the zine scene. Jay really got a kick out of it, too; he had his own film zine named  _ ‘Fraud’  _ which he wrote under a pseudonym. The zine was made up of mock movie reviews for terrible new releases and nonexistent films of the gross out and snuff variety, mostly made up by his own wicked little brain or pitched to him by a drunken Mike. Featured too were violent and-or sex pervert cartoon doodles that made Mike howl with laughter. Jay’s most well-regarded ongoing comic strip at the back of his zine was one in which a wannabe film director faces misfortune after misfortune at trying to achieve his dreams. Poor Sergio- just another victim of Jay’s rotten sense of humor.

Mike still had his mother’s library card, or at least the keychain copy of it, which he ran at the copy machine in the library’s basement. It came out to $10 for sixty copies but Mike still took some kind of guilty pleasure for sticking it to his parents in some small way. He pinned the fliers to telephone poles and taped them on shop windows, on stop signs, the back of strangers’ coats and on car windows. 

Mobile advertising- better than stationary.

_ Calling all Punks!! Hardcores, Anarchos, Street, Geek, Ska, Crust, Cow, Horror, Glam- Seeking Bassist! Auditions 6pm Saturday at Winston’s Recording Studio in the Basement _

With only ten copies left, Mike swung by Jay’s place of work at the corner of Elm and Hurst. 

Yes, working on ‘Elm Street’ had been one of the draws for Jay to start working at the thrift store for the entirety of university and now a year and a half after. The more prevalent reason was that he desperately needed the cash. Jay had learned to tolerate it over the years, however, and had single-handedly created the movie display on the right wall of the place, inadvertently turning the store into  _ the  _ hub of buying and selling movies for the local university students. A lot of obscure and out-of-print stuff came through and the university newspaper even wrote a story about how it was quickly becoming a film buff/hipster must-visit spot for all in and out-of-towners.

Jay tried not to make a big deal about it, but Mike could see the pride in his eyes at having created a little collection of his own that was revered at some degree by others with similar interests.

On good days when Jay’s patience wasn’t short and he wasn’t fretting over the organization of the shelves, Mike would exchange one of Jay’s recommended movies with something embarrassing, and then waltz up the counter, saying, “I didn’t know you liked  _ Alien vs Predator  _ so much.”

Jay would get his revenge later by putting on display a movie like  _ Pot Zombies  _ and attaching a neon label on it reading, “ESSENTIAL PUNK CINEMA.” 

Today Mike didn’t have a lot of time to fuck around. Not only was he trying to get these fliers out but the thrift store was also having a half-off sale. It was crowded and buzzing with activity as soon as he walked in. Jay was behind the counter, ringing up a woman who looked much to posh to be slumming it with the commoners. Mike had no qualms about bypassing the long line and sliding in beside her to speak to his best friend. 

“You’re awake,” Jay greeted him with a sly smile. He looked a little frazzled, but he gave Mike his full attention as if he were seeking refuge in him. 

Mike lifted the papers in his hand. “Duty calls.”

The woman getting rung up inches away from him was startled by the audacity of his proximity. She looked him up and down with a harsh eye, her painted lip curling in disgust.  _ “Excuse me-“ _

“It’s okay,” Mike said, not even making eye contact with her, “I come here all the time. VIP membership, isn’t that right, Jay?”

Jay shot him a deadly look, a hissed breath escaping from between his front teeth before he could stop himself, clearly a too-late warning at exposing his name in front of someone like her. 

_ “Jay,”  _ Mike said as he turned to the lady, causing her to lean back and away from him, her eyes set on his emerald hair, “is short for  _ James.  _ James… _ Plissken. _ You see, I know that not only because I come here all the time, but because the customer membership allows the exclusive privilege of ‘unlocking’ the staff’s names with each month of loyalty. They print ‘em on these little baseball cards with their employee picture, it’s the cutest thing. James’ was the first I got, I have his card in one of these pockets somewhere-“

“Mike,” Jay said, cutting his bit short as he folded a frilly top and placed it in a bag. “What do you want?”

Mike stopped fishing around in his pockets, looked back at him. “Can you keep some of the fliers at the counter?” 

“Yeah, sure.”

“And as a thank you…” Mike lifted a plastic bag warmed by the meatball sub inside. Jay gave a relieved expression. A nearby female employee folding a pair of pants at the table behind them gave a knowing smile that went unnoticed by either of them. 

“I haven’t eaten since, like, eight yesterday. I’m starving.”

“There’s a lemonade in there, too.” Mike leaned over the counter. “It’s actually half-vodka,” he whispered. 

Jay smirked. “Is it?”

“Okay, like seventy-five percent vodka.”

The woman next to him gasped dramatically. They had almost forgotten she was there; that happened a lot when they talked.

“Well I really don’t think any working person should be  _ drinking _ on the job,” the woman said, sounding highly offended. “And if that’s the case, I would like to speak to a manager.”

Mike rolled his eyes. “Oh, it’s a joke, Shirley! Lighten up!” 

“Excuse me!? My name is not ‘Shirley’!”

“Surely you’re joking,” Mike said and this time Jay did laugh. When the woman looked back at him, he frightened just a little bit but another tired twitch in his face begged something like,  _ ‘C’mon, lady. Chill out.’ _

“There’s no alcohol in the lemonade,” Mike said, only to turn to Jay and silently mouth,  _ ‘There totally is.’  _ Jay smiled again and it had yet to weaken in its effect; it warmed Mike’s insides, blanketing him in a brief serenity that made him want to fuck off from the entire world and commit himself like a monk to an existence with the sole intention to make Jay smile. 

“I’ll see you tonight?” he said.

Jay nodded. “Sounds good.”

Mike left the remainder of the fliers on the counter and bowed at the waist to the woman in a royal departure. He was feeling chipper as he left out the door, accidentally bumping into a lanky guy with swooped hair and a gray cardigan. 

“Sorry, dude,” Mike said, and the guy nodded at him with a wave, disappearing inside. 

Mike made a mature decision and decided to make use of the next few hours until Jay got off of work. He stalked the usual local odd-job listings on Craigslist and the like, wandering around town helping small businesses clean out back rooms and helping individuals move out bed bug infested mattresses out onto the street. He carried with him a pair of gloves, a beanie and a nose mask almost always now after he had contracted lice from a sofa he had moved from an apartment last May. 

Jay had not appreciated the hassle of helping Mike rid himself of the tiny pests and disinfect pretty much everything in his apartment, but had eventually gone on to indulge in his sick interest for the disgusting by combing the nits from Mike’s hair with a lice comb and a clinical touch. 

If only Mike had known Jay when he had gotten crabs, that week of hell might have been considerably shorter. 

Mike always knew Jay was a sicko; Jay liked picking at the odd pimple on Mike’s cheek and shoulders, liked pulling ingrown hairs from Mike’s armpits, and even worse, Jay liked watching movies where lovers kissed in the rain. 

Mike, thankfully, avoided infestation this time around and had made a total of seventy-five dollars. He got home by 8:30pm and Jay let himself into Mike’s apartment thirty minutes later with the key Mike had given him. Mike had a key to Jay’s apartment, too, but they hadn’t done a proper exchange with some kind of sappy or heartfelt explanation of how these keys represented just how close they were. Really, they had leant their spare to the other at some point and simply never asked for it back.

Subconsciously, though, Mike must have regarded the key with a certain importance given the attention he gave it over his other keys. Safety, maybe? Like it was somehow a silent promise of a safe place always open to him, an escape if he so needed. He often fiddled with Jay’s key in the line at the grocery store or while waiting for his clothes to dry at the laundromat, either scratching his nail polish off with it or chewing on the end it or using it to pick his teeth. 

Mike turned in the kitchen at the sound of the door closing behind him. “Hey, what’s up? Oh-“ He caught himself as he took in Jay’s weary form stagger further into the apartment. 

Jay was wind-bitten and exhausted, buried in his too-thick coat and leaning uncomfortably under the strap of his messenger bag. He waddled across the carpet in the direction of the sofa, his feet shuffling across the floor when he lacked the energy to lift them.

“Work beat my ass,” he grumbled, struggling to remove his bag from over his coat. 

“Making money, though,” Mike said.

Jay shot him a tired look that made Mike snicker. 

There had been a time the sight of Jay like this had been a bummer. Now Mike regarded it as a challenge.

Because Mike had realized in the time he had been friends with Jay that he had the unique ability to raise Jay from the dead. Jay could show up on Mike’s doorstep beaten by the retail world and blistered by Wisconsin’s shitty weather and Mike was already putting on a black hood and dusting off the spellbooks to summon the little hellion back up from the land of the dead. 

Not literally, of course, because it would seem a beer and a styrofoam container of buffalo wings did the job just fine. 

“Jesus,” Jay said and readily accepted what was offered to him where he sat on the couch. His coat was in a pile on the floor now given the apartment was warm enough to render it unneeded. Mike had to step over it as he walked over to sit down next to him. 

“You got a spot at Wings?” Jay asked. “That Beatles-themed buffalo wing place?”

“Not Beatles, Jay,” Mike said. “It’s themed after Mr. McCartney’s okay-ish band after the Beatles.”

“How embarrassing.”

“Yeah. I did a repair on the oven and had to clean this huge heap of grease out of the back of it-“

Jay winced, made a cut off sound into his beer. “Tell me about it after I eat.”

They watched some shitty show on television and ate their wings in relative silence. Jay didn’t often like talking about his work days, similar with Mike; they wanted to forget they were toiling away their lives doing shit they hated. 

Slowly but surely, Jay came back to life. His lips were plump and red with the spice from the buffalo sauce, his cheeks a lighter shade of pink from the alcohol and heat. His shoes had come off somewhere along the way and now his toes curled and uncurled intermittently where he rested them on the coffee table.

“Do you still have that weed?” Jay asked when they had finished digesting their food. 

They went down the hall to Mike’s room since it was the only room with a window he could open. Mike retrieved the weed and a box of papers from his underwear drawer and didn’t waste time rolling a joint for them. Mike baptized it, sucking the entire length into his mouth so it was damp before lighting the end of it. He took a deep hit and passed it off to Jay. 

Jay didn’t smoke as frequently as Mike did, so when he took a medium-sized puff, he was immediately hacking up his lungs and looking mildly offended that the sticky smelling smoke had dared do him like that. 

“Let yourself cough.” Mike carefully plucked the joint from between Jay’s tightening fingers before he could drop it and burn a hole in the comforter. 

_ “O- Oh, fuck, -ck, -ck!” _

“There ya go, keep coughing. It’s good to cough. Heard that somewhere. Jackie Brown, maybe? I don’t think we’ve ever talked about that movie. What did you think of it, Jay? I mean, compared to Tarantino’s other stuff. I really like Reservoir Dogs, more than Pulp Fiction, I think, but I remember really liking Jackie Brown when I first saw it.”

Jay’s face was flushed red as Mike rambled on. Mike was a loudmouth already but when he was high, he was quick to blabber about nonsense. Jay tried to answer but another series of coughs wreaked havoc on his lungs, so he settled for a shaky thumbs up. 

“Jesus, dude,” Mike said, taking another smooth hit. “Take a breath.”

“I’m good.” Jay’s voice was rough. “I’m good.”

Mike exhaled the smoke out the window and ground out the joint on the windowsill before they could do themselves anymore damage.

The high hit them almost immediately. The skunky smell clouded their senses as the high wrapped around them like a wool blanket, almost too-hot but cozy, cozy, cozy.

“We should watch Jackie Brown,” Mike said. “I think I have a copy of it somewhere around here-“

“No, no.” Jay waved at him with another weak cough that sounded like the last one. “I brought something.”

“A surprise?”

“‘s in my bag. Hold on.”

“Should I close my eyes?”

“Do whatever you want.”

Mike slipped his eyes closed. 

He could hear Jay pad off out of the room and down the hall, only to return a moment later. Mike heard the turn of the record player in the corner of the room before he heard the strings pour through the speakers.

“Someone sold this today.” Jay crossed the room with the album sleeve in his hand and sat down on the edge of Mike’s bed. “I set it aside before they could put it on the shelf. It’s in really good condition and I get a discount anyway.”

It was the soundtrack to the Wes Anderson film,  _ Rushmore.  _ Max Fisher held up his fist on the front with defiance in his eyes. On the back, the track listings in a red and black color scheme. 

“One of the pluses of working at a resale shop.”

“There are very, very few pluses, but yeah.”

The first track ended and then began the next. Mike immediately responded to the dirty guitar with a groan of appreciative fondness. 

“I love this one,” he said, eyes squinting.

“It’s a good album,” Jay said. “Listening to a film’s soundtrack is like listening to a playlist the director’s made. It’s totally personal and unique.”

“So we’re just gonna quote Parks and Rec now?”

“I didn’t know you watched Parks and Rec,” Jay said, eyebrows high on his forehead. “Actually, I don’t know what the hell you watch on TV. Other than Star Trek and Ghost Adventures.”

“Pretty much that’s it,” Mike said and they both laughed much too hard at that.

The next track started. Mike appreciated all types of music, though he preferred to play punk given its intensity and its ability to make him feel incredibly alive. But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t listen to Elton John on a loop or that this very soundtrack was a favorite of his.

Mike recalled the lyrics with ease, the high making him fuzzy and smiley as he turned to Jay and sang,  _ “You, to me, are sweet as roses in the morning,”  _ then mumbled a little before slipping from the bed and onto his feet just in time for the chorus. 

_ “The concrete and the clay beneath my feet begins to crumble, but love will never die!” _

Mike took Jay’s hands and tried to pull him from the bed, but Jay fought him, going dead-weight and leaning back with a stoned smile and a laugh as he groaned, “Nooo.”

“C’mon,” Mike laughed, “c’mon dance with me.”

“I can’t dance,” Jay said, getting a little giggly. “Mike, I don’t wanna dance.” When Mike didn’t let his hands go, Jay leaned forward, mouth opening as he neared Mike’s wrist in a silent threat of an imminent bite. Mike let him go; Jay might have been joking now but Mike had suffered those teeth before when Jay was really drunk and upset at Mike’s annoying antics. At first it was a stinging shock, but now on those nights they got really fucked up and Jay would randomly sink his teeth into Mike’s shoulder as they waited on the curb for the bus to show up, Mike would answer with a tired hum and a light smack on his cheek.

“I have something, too,” Mike said. Jay looked up at him curiously. “You can’t drop it though.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“‘Kay. You don't gotta close your eyes.”

Jay closed his eyes anyway. 

Mike turned down the record player to a whisper and went over to the closet. He opened it and avoided the pile of clothing on the floor that fell out.

He reached into the deep darkness and smiled when he felt the cool length, the faint vibration against his fingertips. Mike pulled the bass guitar from its hiding place and into the warm lamplight. 

He had named it, ‘El Diablo.’ 

It was sleek black, still in rather good condition considering Mike rarely ever played bass. Gold frets, a stainless steel pickup; it was deadly. 

Jay peeled open his red eyes when Mike nudged him with the body of it. He looked at the bass before looking up at Mike.

“What,” Jay said.

“Here,” Mike laughed. “Hold it.”

Jay took El Diablo in his hands a little clumsily, like he hadn’t accounted for the weight of it. Mike helped him arrange it in his lap so it wasn’t falling to the floor. When it was secure, he took a step back and cocked his head. 

“You look like, Paul Simonon,” Mike said. “A discount Paul Simonon.”

“Oh fuck you.”

And that glint of fury in his eyes coupled with the black bass in his grip made Mike smile. He sat at the foot of the bed and faced Jay, one foot on the floor and the other folded on the bed.

“Bass is easier than you think,” Mike assured. “Its only got four strings instead of six.”

“You think I can’t handle six strings?”

“Hell, I think you can handle eight. But let’s start with four.”

Mike reached forward and plucked each string as he labeled them aloud. Jay hesitantly did the same, looking a little unsure of what he was doing.

“Now press down on the third fret and pluck the D string again. It’ll change the pitch. Yeah, just above that one, right here.” Mike reached forward again and pressed Jay’s finger down on the fret. “Wait- Well, not like that but- up a little bit more, up- No, not that far. Not on the metal, Jay, ‘cause then you get a buzz-“

Jay huffed an aggravated sound. “Mike, I don’t know how to do this-“

“You’re doing fine, Jay. Now don’t hook your fingers. Loosen them up a little bit. You’re all rigor mortis.”

Jay scowled. 

He hated the awkwardness of not knowing how to do something right off the bat. Mike had seen a lot of Jay’s amateur films but he knew it wasn’t all of them. The earliest and most inept were most likely destroyed by that outcast kid he once was who hated the world and much all else. 

Jay went to pluck the D string but slipped up to the E by accident after his fingers twitched with hesitation. He let out a growl of growing frustration.

“Shh,” Mike said, biting back a laugh at his lack of patience but mostly failing. “You’re doing fine, Jay.”

“You’re not telling me what to do, though. What am I even doing? You’re just watching me make an ass of myself. Like, be clearer or just take this thing so I can go back to listening to my album.”

Mike smiled and stood from the foot of the bed and walked around to sit behind Jay. He came up right behind him, Mike’s front no more than a centimeter from Jay’s back. They could feel the warmth in the narrow space between their bodies, and then through their skin when Mike blanketed his arms over the outside of Jay’s. Jay’s fingernails were stark in contrast to Mike’s painted ones atop his. It was like Jay was wearing Mike as a coat or a blanket, the way he was draped over him. 

“All right,” Mike said, tall enough and with Jay’s sagging posture that Jay’s head was a little below his. “We’re gonna put your hands just like this. Up a little, but not bending your wrist. Feel that? Less tensed up, more relaxed.”

Jay hummed quietly. 

“Okay, we're gonna play what we were just playing but slower, all right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jay murmured.

Mike guided Jay’s fingers with his own over his, applying pressure to his fingers as indication of when and where to push down on the fret. The sound was much more rhythmic and defined than Jay’s previous inexperienced twangs of sound. Mike wouldn’t let him fall behind or falter; he moved through Jay’s fingers, carrying him from one note to the next until it was a clean and clear scale. He let up on his touch just a little bit and smiled when he found Jay still moving without him.

“See? You got it,” Mike said. “Crybaby.”

Jay twisted just enough to drive his elbow into Mike’s side. Mike groaned with pain through his laughter. The movement had shifted their position ever so slightly so Jay was leaning against Mike’s front. 

The weed was doing something, making everything feel like cashmere, as was the cold strips of wind occasionally filtering in through the still-open window that made him want to cuddle up for warmth. Mike readjusted his arms over Jay’s, fingers sliding up a little further to the tips of Jay’s, Mike’s shoulders curling forward ever so slightly to accommodate his new proximity. 

Jay’s shoulders pressed firmly against his chest and Mike had to bite his tongue for a couple of reason as he waited for Jay to address the pinpoint hardness against his shoulder blades, indicative of the silver barbells pierced through each of his nipples under his shirt. 

“You’re such an idiot,” Jay grumbled without looking from the strings he was still plucking at.

Mike laughed, gross and obnoxious and evil, jolting Jay’s entire body. “I knew it, I knew you were gonna say something! You sound like my fucking parents. Okay, now focus- I’m trying to teach you this.”

Mike reapplied pressure on the back of Jay’s hands. Jay loosened up a bit to allow himself to be guided and Mike found it surprising that he was as engaged as he was with this.

_ A-D-G-D-D-D-G-D-A-A-A-A-A _

“There you go. That’s all it is; getting little pieces down and then just speeding it up. You’re doing perfect, Jay.”

Jay exhaled out his nose, squirmed against him. 

They plucked together slowly and then a little faster until the notes came together in a recognizable composition. 

“Fugazi,” Jay mumbled in realization.

Mike smiled. “Yeah. You got it.”

Mike could smell him.

Sweat, after a hard day’s work being in a sweater and under a heater, trailing after people taking clothes off hangers and leaving them on the floor. Hair gel, of course, smelling like coconut or maybe that was the aroma of some expensive conditioner. Then there was a fragrant waft of musk, smelling masculine in its headiness and most fragrant behind his ear. 

Mike caught himself leaning forward ever so slightly, only realizing this when the tip of his nose almost skimmed the shell of Jay’s ear, unpierced, but once almost.

Jay had gone with Mike once to the piercer’s with the drunken intention of getting an earring. They had admittedly been more than very drunk but Jay had been very sure on the walk to the piercer’s.

“Jus’ one, okay?” Jay had said. “Only one.”

“Bellybutton, Jay,” Mike suggested, stumbling and almost face planting on the sidewalk. “That’d be so sick.”

“ _ No, _ ” Jay whined. “Ear. Up on the ear.”

“Right here?” 

Mike remembered even through the haze of his intoxication how Jay had shivered beneath the pinch of his fingers on the shell of his ear.

“Ye,” Jay said. “Fuckit. Why not?”

And Mike had laughed and shook his head and said, “I am  _ corrupting _ you.”

Jay’s swimmy gaze smoldered. “I make my own decisions.”

And he had made the decision as soon as he saw the needle to leave the chair and forget now and always about ever getting a piercing. 

Mike took Jay’s spot and endured the slide of the needle through the top of his ear. He had bled a lot more than he should have because his blood was thin and hot with the alcohol and Jay fretted over him with this adorably horrified expression and his hands ghosting around his dripping ear, rambling drunkenly, “Mike, are you okay? Does it hurt? Oh God, you’re a mess. You’re going to don’t ruin your shirt, you know that right? Oh fuck, it’s bad, Mike! Fuck,  _ fuck- _ “

Mike just laughed and giggled and cradled his face as he assured him, “Jay, Jay. Listen —  _ hic!— _ listen, shh. I’m okay!” 

Jay didn’t take well to be told to calm down when actively witnessing his friend’s liberal bleeding, so he pummeled Mike’s chest with a small balled up fist again and again, each harder than the last but not hard at all to Mike’s broad chest. He was so drunk but so passionate as he pointed at the poor piercer and began chewing him out for, “Putting holes in my best friend! I'm glad I didn’t let you touch my ears. Look what you did to ‘im! Fucking mutilated him, asshole!” 

He turned into a little spitfire, a wannabe Gremlin only as intimidating as Gizmo as he faced off against a tatted and pierced giant. It had made Mike warm, how he tried to protect him. 

The recollection made Mike felt similarly. The vibrations of the strings buzzing between their fingers like electricity and crawling up their arms, making a B-line for their chests. It melted them from the inside out, and every breath Mike took caused Jay to rise and fall with him at a steady pace, the both of them subtly rocking together. 

The warmth, the music; Together, they made a sound, deep and low and perfect.

_ Risk.  _ Risks. 

_ Identify desire. _

“Be in my band,” Mike said close to Jay’s ear.

The last note Jay plucked twanged off and out, fading off into silence. The wind rustled something as it entered through the window. The record player was still on but it was a whisper of an instrumental track.

“Mike.” Jay’s voice was quiet. Mike still couldn’t see his face. “I’m not a musician.”

Mike’s thumb twitched over Jay’s. “I think you can be whatever you want to be.”

And then Jay spoke with such a deep sincerity that it sobered Mike and woke him to an admission that maybe Jay had never even revealed to himself.

“I don’t know what I want.”

The lesson ended like that, without a definitive end but an overall feeling that that was enough for tonight, Jay still leaning against him and the window still open. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music featured:
> 
> The song Mike likes: https://youtu.be/2hEb2vOOaxI
> 
> Song Mike sings: https://youtu.be/1CEQ640sHr8
> 
> The bassline Jay and Mike are playing (it’s absolutely delicious): https://youtu.be/cMOAXm94VWo
> 
> ((There’s a Gorillaz reference in here, also lol, as is a reference to A Clockwork Orange))


	5. Chapter 5

Winston’s Recording Studio could be found in the heart of Milwaukee. It had produced many an album, mostly country and folk and even a few comedy albums, but Mike was set on being the first punk album to be recorded there. Once they won Battle of the Bands, they wouldn’t have to worry about paying the surprisingly high recording fee; that would be included in their winnings. 

Mike knew the owner, Jerry, after doing so many odd jobs around the building. It was less appealing than it sounded; he cleaned bathrooms and repaired faulty amps and tried not to get electrocuted when he went to fix light fixtures spitting out blue sparks. Mike had tried his best to convince Jerry to exchange his labor for recording sessions but Jerry always said the same thing:

“Tape is money. And the money you’re making!” Then he would laugh without finishing his thought because Mike’s financial situation didn’t need to be said.

Jerry wasn’t a totally bad guy, though; he gave Mike free reign of the basement four days a week for a few hours for his band to practice, but that was only because Mike begged so much. The basement space was dank and outdated, definitely less-impressive and therefore less strict in its rules compared to the recording spaces upstairs. 

Mike was free to nurse a beer and chain smoke nervously as he waited for those auditioning to show up. He was sure he felt more nervous than whoever would walk down those rickety stairs. The amp was plugged in and it was humming an electric hum that made his nerves shot. 

It was twenty after the hour when the first showed up. He was obviously hungover and played much too lethargically. The second played much too chaotically and was trying her best to convince Mike to change the entire band’s sound from punk to metal. The third to audition was a college freshman who was embarrassingly amateur. Mike knew he could have been nicer about it but by this time he was feeling frustrated and a little buzzed and said something like, “C’mon, man.”

At one point, a guy came in seemingly right off the street and said that he had never picked up an instrument, just that the flyer had made the whole band thing sound like a fun little hobby.

Mike squeezed the bridge of his nose, sighed. “Get out.”

The guy nodded, gave a thumbs up. “Sure thing.”

This whole audition thing was proving unfruitful. By 9pm, Mike was feeling defeated. He sat sulking on top of a five foot subwoofer, already drafting a pleading text in his head begging Donnie to come back. He’d take risks, he swore! He’d jump out of a fucking moving car, just please do Battle of the Bands with us!

Another part of his brain was still stuck in the night a few days previous, when Jay had leaned against him and their fingers had moved in synch and they had made music together. It was not to be; Jay didn’t know what he wanted, or maybe he did. Maybe it had been the weed talking and tangling him all up in his feelings, discouraging into thinking he couldn’t reach out and just take what he wanted, needed, reach out and take a fucking chance if it would just make him happy. 

Mike caught phantom whiffs of Jay when he recalled that fragile moment surrounded in the haze of marijuana smoke. It was like something stuck in his nose, something clinging to his clothes. 

He blew smoke from his nostrils and looked over his shoulder when he heard the basement door open and shut.

They looked… plain. No studs, no wild hair, nothing to indicate their musical interests or personal politics. They almost looked innocent, like they would pull out acoustic guitars from their respective gig bags and sing Simon & Garfunkel. 

The pair went to stand behind the single microphone Mike had set up near the front of the room. The taller, bearded one brought out a white bass from his case, while the shorter pulled out a red electric guitar. Mike watched with narrowed eyes from the top of the subwoofer. 

“Hi, I’m Colin,” said the shorter one before pointing to the man beside him, “and he’s Jim, and we’re from Canada.”

Jim leaned down into the microphone. “And we’re a packaged deal.”

Mike blinked. Canadians?

“I’m not looking for a guitarist, though,’” Mike said. “I’m only looking for a bassist.”

“Yeah,” Colin said regretfully, “but we were hoping you’d listen to the both of us play anyway.”

“And you play guitar?”

Colin smiled, nodded. He was adorable; Mike dreaded having to crush his dreams. The sight of his broken heart would be equivalent to a puppy having been kicked, he was sure of it.

“Bassist plays first,” Mike said, taking another drag of his cigarette. 

Colin scooted over to give him some space while Jim plugged into the amp. It seemed like everyone took a deep breath at the exact same time.

Then, Jim started playing.

It was something Mike didn’t recognize, not like Holiday In Cambodia or TV Party, both of which he had already heard tonight, rather badly he might add. The bassline Jim was playing now was complex and requiring complete dexterity of Jim’s fingers as he plucked here and there and then way up high until finally settling at the bottom of the neck where he went wild with the bassline, nearly dizzying in its speed.

Mike could feel it in his chest, his blood, each note vibrating his skeleton and teeth with it’s addictive pace. He actually teetered for a second on the subwoofer as he found himself nearing the edge and leaning too far forward.

Jim finished, clean and confident, giving the bass a little finishing shake so the remaining note warbled and wavered through the air. Mike tried his best to remain cool, sucking at the bit of drool that had escaped the corner of his mouth. 

“So, uh,” he said, “what’s that from?”

“I made it up,” Jim said.

“What? When?”

“Just now.”

Mike’s heart was racing. This was fucking magic.

“Do I… go now?”

Oh right. Colin.

“Let me ask you a question first. You said you were a packaged deal,” Mike said, gesturing between them with his smoke. “What’s that about?”

“We’re best friends,” Colin said. 

“And you have to do everything together? How’s that working out?”

“Let me ask you a question,” Jim said, now sounding a little curt himself. “What kind of sound are you shooting for? Casting a pretty wide net with that flier.”

“You don’t think I know what I want?”

“We can’t be sure.” Jim wasn’t moving. “We might be wasting our time.”

Mike jumped off his perch. He landed with a muted thud and flicked his burnt down cigarette onto the stained carpet. 

“What I want,” he said, “is something real. Raw. Something to wake people up and get their blood flowing. Fucking inspiring shit. Something for the weirdos and freaks and outcasts. That, is what I want. Think you’re still wasting your time?”

A smirk pulled at the corner of Jim’s mouth.

“And what about slower songs?” he said. “Are you opposed to slower songs? Quieter ones?”

“‘I’m So Tired,’ is one of my favorites.”

Jim laughed, nodded, hummed. 

“Now,” Jim said, “are you gonna let him play?”

“We already have a guitar.”

“Yeah, who’s that?”

“Me!”

“Perfect!” Jim clapped his hands. “Battle it out. You and Colin.”

“Hold on, hold on,” Mike said. This was slipping away from him.

“Or are you scared?” Colin turned to look up at Jim. “I think he’s scared, Jim.”

“I know he’s scared, Colin. Rightfully so.”

Mike smiled a mischievous smile, quirking a dark eyebrow upward. “Oh yeah, motherfucker? All right. Let’s go.”

Colin plugged in as Mike grabbed his own black electric guitar he kept in the basement. They stood facing each other, Jim watching on with a smug smile and his arms crossed.

Colin’s candy-red guitar shimmered beneath his small hands as he gripped it. On the upper right corner of the body, Mike spotted a small sticker of the Canadian flag.

“You first.”

Mike scoffed, looked down at his fingers settling on the strings. “Don’t think being nice will get you what you want.”

“I don’t know about that,” Colin murmured, sharing in a small laugh with Jim, and Mike bristled playfully, suddenly feeling surrounded. 

He turned the volume knob all the way up and strummed down in a bold maneuver that resonated in a harsh reverberation that would make anyone cower. 

But Colin stood unaffected. He looked amused, almost, but not too impressed. 

Mike curled his lip. He focused in on the placing of his fingers with a new vehemence and went to work. 

He wasn’t the most adept guitar player, few punk musicians were, but he got the job done. This time he tried to steer away from power chords and try the more complex shit he hadn’t done since he first started learning guitar in his childhood bedroom. It was messy, sloppy, but heartfelt and passionate. It accurately represented his life, in some kind of symbolic way. 

When Mike finished to the best of his playing ability, Colin nodded politely with a ‘not bad’ sorta expression that felt like a punch in the gut in the best kind of way. 

“Let’s see what you got, then,” Mike said, a little out of breath from being so invested. 

Colin may have been small but as soon as he put his fingers to the strings, unleashed was an impressive scream of music. The guitar wailed as he licked up and down the frets at a fast pace. He was concentrated but still somehow light as he shook the instrument and had it hiccuping and whining in his hands. Colin strummed a little bit just to show he could but then returned back to his assault on their ears of a wild, out of control guitar solo inspirational in its ‘fuck all’ attitude. 

The sound droned out into a humming silence as Colin finished. 

Mike wanted to laugh. So he did. 

He laughed until his stomach hurt and tears were running down his face and he was coughing stale tobacco breath. Jim’s face had suddenly gone red and Colin was looking sheepish but wary, halfway to being insulted and halfway to picking a fight. 

“Hey, asshole!” Jim spat.

His poisonous tone didn’t affect Mike as he was in the throes of pure joy.

“This is fucking lifechanging shit!” he exclaimed. “Can’t you feel it? You’re talented. Both of you are talented. And I’m not a sappy fuck or trying to suck your dicks or anything.”

Colin returned to his sweet demeanor, shrugging and saying, “Well, thank you.”

“What else can you play?”

“We can play the Canadian anthem.”

“Ugh, no thanks.” Mike placed a hand on his chest, gave a wince. “Patriotism gives me indigestion. Can you sing?”

“I sound like a dying cat when I sing. But Jim-“

“I sing a little bit,” Jim said. 

“Sing something.”

“Ah, fuck. Um… Efficiency and progress is ours once more! Now that we have the neutron bomb. It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done~”

Jim softened the words and sang them like a folksy cover that gave them new life while also showing off the distinctness and strength of his voice. 

This was huge. A bigger sound, more possibility with Jim singing, too. Harmonizing was now an option. Did they write their own music? Because that shit before was mindblowing. Jack was actually right; Donnie’s absence was a blessing in disguise.

“You’re in,” Mike said.

“Really!?” Colin said. 

“Fuck yes. Both of you. You’re in, you’re in.”

Mike shook their hands just to seal the deal, his body trembling with excitement even as he pulled out his phone, called Rich and put him on speaker.

“Two?” Rich said. “Mike, I’m still at the restaurant-”“I know, I know, but listen!”

And then they let it rip and that shut Rich up. Once they finished, Rich could be heard saying, “Um. Yeah. You’re not a complete idiot, right? You don’t need me to tell you to obviously let them join the band?”

“Already way ahead of you,” Mike said. 

A distant voice on the other side of the call could then be heard saying something like, “Give me the phone.”

“Hey, asshole,” Laura, Rich’s girlfriend, was suddenly clear. “Why are you calling us during date night?”

“Because I’m secretly in love with you,” Mike whined into the receiver. “Don’t tell Rich, but we can go, me and you, finally just jump on a bus and be together!” 

“You wish, Joker.”

“Because of my hair?” Mike asked with a coughed laugh. “Not nice. But that’s a good one.”

He could hear her smile. “Thank you.”

Mike liked Laura. She and Rich had met junior year in high school and it was strange because they were young at the time but they were the perfect match, so stable and devoted and in love. Mike had teased them even back then, calling them Mom and Dad because they really did have it all together compared to his own fucked up love life crammed with one night stands and messy breakups and heartbreaks. 

“You and Rich meet us at the bar after you’re done with your date,” Mike said. “You can meet the new guys. And hey- get a dessert. It’s on me.”

Laura huffed a laugh. “If you say so.”

“Yeah, anything less than three dollars,” Rich said distantly.

They left out of the basement for the bar before anyone else could show up to audition. Mike was fully intending on catching the bus to the bar but Jim was already unlocking a car parked on the curb outside of Winston’s. 

“Damn! You have a car!?” Mike said. “If I knew that, I would have let you into the band right away. Lead with that next time.”

“Duly noted,” Jim said.

Mike slid into the backseat of the decade-old, rundown Toyota Camry and texted Jay to meet them at the bar once he got out of work.

_youll never believe these guys_

_their next level_

_their Canadian_

_CANADIAN_

Jay responded, _*They’re_

_HNNGHHH_

_it makes me so hard when you correct my grammar_

_Shut up_

They waited until Rich arrived with Laura so they could take shots together for the first time as a band. Though Rich opted for shots of water instead, the sentiment was still there. 

They all drank and then drank some more, over time becoming more intoxicated and sentimental.

Jim and Colin were hilarious. They were quick on their feet and dry in their humor, so subtle you’d almost miss it if you weren’t paying attention. Word play and references; after they made mention of Lorem Ipsum as the punchline of a joke, Mike considered them intellectuals. 

They had met as early as middle school. Jim had moved to Toronto from Alberta and Colin had taken to the shy, new kid at school. Once, Colin had single-handedly battled a whole legion of school bullies who had targeted Jim during their walk home from school. 

Mike smiled; he knew Colin was badass beneath that sweet, well-mannered exterior. 

Their origins came as a comfort to Mike considering he and Rich had met similarly. He reckoned birds of a feather really did flock together and at times like this, it seemed like everything was lining up on a cosmic level. 

Jay arrived within the next thirty minutes. Mike spotted him almost immediately as he came through the door, some subconscious part of him recognizing Jay’s presence in any given room like a bird recognizes migration patterns- instinctually and almost supernaturally. 

“Who is this?” Mike slurred, coming up behind Jay before he could be spotted. “Someone in dire need of hard alcohol after another shitty day at his sucky job?”

Jay’s familiar expression of vague annoyance when it came to Mike’s antics resurfaced after his initial shocked surprise. Mike smiled, threaded two fingers through one of Jay’s belt loops, and pulled him in the direction of the crowded bar counter.

“Calgon,” Jay droned as he gave into Mike’s tugging, “take me away.”

Mike bought him a beer as thanks for coming out at such short notice and Jay sucked it down like he had every intention of getting shit-faced by the end of the night. 

They stayed at the bar counter so they were in close proximity of the alcohol. They each finished beer and ordered another, while Mike incessantly rambled in his drunken excitement. 

“They’re great, like, you don’t even know. The way they played was unreal, I mean, you have to hear them. You will hear them, eventually, but, uh, you get what I mean. 

“That good, huh?” Jay raised an eyebrow, smirked. “You sound like you’ve taken a hit of something very illegal.”

“I’m just drunk,” Mike assured.

“So what happened? I thought you were only looking for a bassist. But both of them are now in the band?”

“Yeah, well, they’re a package deal.”

Jay looked to his left and over at them. There they sat together in the booth like they were joined at the shoulders. 

“What’s their deal?” Jay said.

“Best friends,” Mike said, and Jay gave him an unreadable look before he topped off his beer and gestured for another. 

“Speaking of which-“

“Oh God,” Jay grumbled, but the corner of his mouth was pulling upward. 

“I wanna thank you.”

Jay arched an eyebrow. “For what?”

“I dunno. For like, supporting me.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Hey, no,” Mike said, light-headed and swaying closer and it felt like just them, like they were all alone in this bar, and Mike wondered how Jay did that, how he demanded his entire attention without even asking. “I mean it. I don’t think I coulda done a lot of the stuff I’ve done without you.”

Jay pinched his lips up at the side of his mouth, eyes averted and cheeks flushed with the heat and the alcohol. Mike continued to talk without thinking, his tongue loose and his heart filled with emotion for some odd reason. 

“I’m not even sure how I used to, like, function without you. Pretty sure I’d be locked up or completely down and out without you-”

Jay made a bitten off sound in his throat, his hand moving halfway upward as if he wished to plaster it over Mike’s mouth.

“Hush,” he said. “Enough.”

Mike smirked. He ordered them a shot each and they threw them back, mirroring each other’s disgusted, tongue-out expression before falling into laughter. 

Jim and Colin came over to get another drink and Mike took the opportunity to finally introduce Jay to his new bandmates. 

Sentimentality swelled within him again— that damn liquor— and Mike suddenly seemed like a child, timidly unveiling his most prized treasure to his new friends. Nothing they said or did would ever change Mike’s opinion of Jay but still, he caught himself feeling vulnerable and ripped open as he slipped a hand onto the middle of Jay’s back, fingers spread and palm warm.

“This is Jay,” Mike said, head dipped ever so slightly. “He’s my best friend.”

There was a millisecond of paused silence as the Canadians looked at Jay, who was still somehow shorter than Colin if only by an inch or two, while Jim towered over the both of them. Mike’s thumb barely stroked over Jay’s spine as his own heart raced at their acceptance of Jay, but then Colin and Jim were smiling with such warmth and shaking Jay’s hand and complimenting him on his horror-themed shirt and the pins on his black jacket and his everything. 

Mike exhaled the breath he had been holding, hand sliding down to Jay’s lower back, feeling Jay shift under him in a trembly sort of way that made Mike want to warm him up with another shot of Fireball whiskey. 

So he did and Jay started talking about his day, about someone annoying at work and the songs that are constantly on repeat over the speakers slowly driving him out of his mind. Mike shut up for once and just listened, nodded, hummed.

Then suddenly, Jay stopped talking. 

Mike furrowed his brow, turned his head to follow Jay’s laser-focused gaze just over his shoulder. 

Amongst the bar-goers stood that guy. From the thrift store. He wasn’t wearing his cardigan anymore but was wearing another equally hipster-ish outfit: a stylish brown button down and a pair of black skinny jeans. He talked with a bespectacled woman but his expression held a politeness reserves for relative strangers.

“I see that guy at The Dig sometimes,” Jay said. “He actually has a really good taste in movies.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“The Thing. Star Wars.”

“Which one?”

“The original trilogy.” Jay scoffed, “C’mon.”

Mr. Hipster laughed at something the woman said. His smile made his eyes crease up and his shoulders shake. He looked like when an actor laughed, all pretty and nice to look at, nothing like Mike’s own smile that was sly and made him look like a lizard.

“He’s cute,” Mike grumbled, like it was a shame.

Jay snapped his eyes back to Mike, seemingly surprised by this observation.

“What?” Mike said. “Is he not?”

“I mean, yeah.” Jay’s face was looking a bit redder.

Being drunk meant feeling a lot of things at once, all of which came as a surprise. Mike was surprised now at the pang in his own chest, the uncomfortable twist of his stomach, the flare of affectionate clinginess that made him want to wrap his arms around Jay’s shoulders and just squeeze him against his chest where it was warm and safe and he didn’t have to worry about seeing handsome people who frequented the thrift shop out in the real world. 

Then another surprise came, this time the alcohol rushing to Mike’s head and making his mouth move before he could regulate the words coming out of him.

“You should go talk to him.”

“What?” Jay said. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I-“ He bit his bottom lip, tightened his grip around his beer. “I’ll fuck it up.”

Mike huffed a laugh, but his mouth was pulled strangely and could have been interpreted as either a smile or a frown.

“What do you mean you’ll fuck it up? How would you fuck it up? Jay, this is what you do. Walk up to him. Lead with your hips just a little bit, all right?” Mike shifted his own hips from side to side. “Just enough to put it in his head where he’ll be for the rest of the night-“

“Jesus, Mike.”

“Hey, listen. Have him buy you a drink. Laugh too hard at all his stupid jokes. Touch his arm just barely, just enough to drive him fucking wild.” Mike touched Jay’s sleeve with the back of his fingers. Jay twitched under his touch like it was electrically charged. Mike spoke lowly, in that grumbly voice an octave lower and gruffer than his usual one as he took a step closer, their position now putting an emphasis on their height difference. “‘Wanna go back home with me?’”

Jay blinked, his slight overbite forcing his pink lips to part, cheeks still flushed a deep rosy shade under the warm barlights. 

Damn, he had to be wasted. 

“Tell him, ‘Yeah, dumbass, yeah of course I wanna go back to yours.’ Get on his dick, ride it into next week, and then kick it before he even has time to wipe himself off.”

“You’re disgusting.” Jay averted his gaze, took a sip of his beer, peeked back up at him. “Do you do that?”

“Who doesn’t do that?”

“Decent people.”

“I’ve never met a single one.”

Hipster Extraordinaire ended his conversation and scanned the crowd. There was nowhere for them to hide and soon enough recognition was dawning over his features, lighting him up better than Mike could ever dream of being. Whatever remained of his good mood and excitement previously was gone as the guy neared, Mike’s smile waning and something heavy settling in his stomach. 

“Jay!”

“Oh, hey!” Jay said like he hadn’t seen him or hadn’t just been talking about him. Mike groaned internally because he hated that uppity, polite sorta voice Jay put on sometimes. “Duncan, this is Mike.”

“Hey, how are you?” Duncan held out his hand and Mike felt obligated to take it to save himself the awkwardness.

Duncan was about as tall as him, maybe a little taller. He was skinnier and wore earth tones. But the longer Mike looked at him, the more unenthusiastic he became. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason he felt this way, just that there was something about Duncan that seemed grossly fake. It was that feeling of just knowing on a molecular level that you’d never gel with the person before you, like they would never be friends or even talk to each other if it wasn’t for someone— Jay, in this instance— forcing their interaction. 

“I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere,” Duncan said.

“I’m at the Dig all the time.” Mike tapped Jay with his elbow. “Best friend and all.”

“Cool, cool,” Duncan said, but it lacked the enthusiasm the words suggested. He turned back to Jay. “So what brings you out here?”

“Having a drink. Mike got some new members in his band, so we’re celebrating.”

Duncan moved on from that quickly, didn’t acknowledge the news or Mike at all. His eyes were set solely on Jay as he continued. “Hey, I watched that movie you recommended me. I loved it. It was wild as shit-“

“I know, right!”

Mike’s eyebrows furrowed. So, they knew each other. Because Jay made it sound like the guy showed up sometimes and bought a movie or two. But Jay recommended him movies. Jay didn’t even recommend Mike movies, come to think of it. Maybe he used to, when they first met, but he didn’t give Mike any suggestions now of what to watch.

They went on talking and Mike was too drunk to know how long he should stand there or if he was even a part of the conversation anymore. They were talking about something else now, sharing thoughts Mike couldn’t hear over the rabble of the bar or the music coming in through the speakers.

But he sure as hell heard Duncan tell Jay, “Let me buy you a drink.”

They walked off together to go get another drink, maybe another Pabst Blue Ribbon or maybe whatever locally-brewed nonsense Duncan was drinking.

Mike shook his head and got the fuck out of there. Whatever.

Jim, Colin, Rich and Laura were still sitting at the red leather booth against the wall. Rich was sipping on a glass of water and laughing with the others over some story Mike had walked too late in on. He slid in next to Laura, who put an arm around his shoulder and tugged at the green hair at the back of his head. Mike shrugged her off with an annoyed grimace that made the woman laugh and that only pissed Mike off more.

Thankfully pretty much everyone else at the table was just as drunk and Mike’s mood didn’t completely register with them. He tried his best to listen but he found himself increasingly distracted as time went on. He watched from across the bar as Duncan and Jay spoke closely together, laughing and carrying on without any acknowledgment of anyone else around them or that Mike had once been at their side. 

There was that burning ache in his stomach that Mike couldn’t pinpoint, something like irritation but also something else so intense and visceral, it made him want to drown it in alcohol. 

Jay had made a few friends from his frequent visits to the movie theater, Mike standing by as they prattled on and on about this new feature and that old film they would be showing on the weekend. But Mike had never felt like he did now, because they didn’t look at him like Duncan looked at him, didn’t laugh so hard at his jokes, didn’t loom so close to him.

Mike tried not to stare; it was only making him feel worse. He kept his eyes down on the bubbles popping on the surface of the beer on the table but couldn’t help but sneak a few glances at Jay every few seconds. 

Through the haze of drunkenness shared by most in the booth, Mike finally caught on to what Colin was saying. It was something about a new startup in Canada he had heard about, some dating service where singles picked potential partners based on smell alone. 

“What?” Laura asked. “How do they do that?”

“Sweaty t-shirts in plastic baggies. You get this big package with like twenty sweaty shirts in it. All of it anonymous people’s sweat. Their success rate’s like 85% or something like that. Hella high.”

“That’s fucking disgusting,” Mike grumbled, drawing a shapeless pattern on the tabletop with the tip of his finger.

Colin sighed, took a sip of his beer. “Yeah,” he said, “love is disgusting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That dating service is a real thing


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late! Hopefully the length makes up for it!

Mike knew he had a newspaper around here somewhere. Most editions of the Milwaukee paper delivered to his doorstep suffered the same fate of being used to sop up all sorts of spills, and occasionally bodily fluids, but still, there had to be at least one spared issue around here somewhere.

“There you are, you fuck,” Mike said as he pulled Sunday’s paper from where it had been swept underneath the refrigerator. 

He dusted the fuzz off of it and out of curiosity, flipped it open to the music section before he took it over to the living room. A two-inch ad for Battle of the Bands was right there on the bottom of the page in bold text beckoning musicians to come test their skills at the audition.

At its inception, Milwaukee’s Battle of the Band’s wasn’t anticipated to be this big of a deal. Yes, the ad was small but it was an ad nonetheless for a music competition that was previously unheard of. The competition had gotten so big that auditions became a necessity unless they wanted the competition to last, at the very least, three months. 

Mike’s band hadn’t made it last year, but this year he just knew they would. He knew it like he knew of the approaching snow, or the passage of time; he knew it like an electricity shared between his cells. 

He closed the paper with a noisy crinkle and went over to sit on the living room floor. He yawned and tried to shake the sleepiness from his head as he quickly wrapped the newspaper around the small box he had acquired at his most recent job. An art store twelve minutes away had needed help moving boxes of old merch out of the backroom. Mike had to load them into moving trucks destined for headquarters where they would incinerate the outdated products or dump them into the ocean instead of donating them. 

Fucking capitalists.

That’s when one of the cardboard box flaps had fallen open and Mike had seen it. Something like recognition flipped on in his brain without his permission, a realization of necessity on behalf of a certain best friend. They hadn’t given it to him for free but he had managed to cut a small deal of shaving a dollar or two off of his end of the day pay to leave with it.

“Glad you said that,” Mike had said with a smile as he tucked the product inside the safety of his jacket. “I was gonna have to steal it if you said no.”

It was meant as a joke but the owners of the art store hadn’t seemed to think so. There was little chance they’d ever accept his paid labor again, and just like that, Mike’s mouth had once again gotten him trouble. 

He smoothed the paper around the box and held it out, thinking it didn’t look so bad. Jay wouldn’t mind; he wasn’t the best receiver of gifts anyway. The more casual it looked, the better he would accept it, or at least Mike hoped so.

By 9:45am, Mike was getting dressed. It was surprisingly warm outside, maybe mid to high sixties. He didn’t have to wear a jacket, so Mike settled for a modest t-shirt and jeans. The news was predicting this was the last bit of warmth before Milwaukee turned into a hellish ice world for the next nine months, so Mike regarded the entire walk to Jay’s apartment with a kind of bittersweet gratefulness for being in the presence of something so beautiful now that he would eventually miss. 

“Heyyo,” he called as he pushed open Jay’s apartment door with the key he had just been holding between his teeth. 

Jay looked over where he stood shirtless in the kitchen. He was mid-sip of the coffee in his coffee mug while he brushed toast crumbs from his fingers into the sink. 

“Hey,” Jay said once he set his mug down. Mike had seen him shirtless countless times, but still his first reaction at someone laying eyes on his bare torso was to raise his hand to scratch and hold at his shoulder in some kind bashful protection from his gaze.

Jay wasn’t a proud creature, unlike Mike who sometimes went around in bondage gear because he was rather fond of that side of the punk aesthetic, that 1970s marriage between sex and rock that compelled him to wear straps and restraints and tight leather pants and black mesh tank tops beneath his spike-studded jacket. Additionally, it was hilarious to watch older people to gawk at him as he passed and for them to ponder what ever could be his and Jay’s relationship, and if it was even a relationship or just some sado-masochistic arrangement and the shorter, more put together one was taking his disheveled gimp out on a walk.

Jay was mostly tolerant of his, at times, extreme style but on days of Mike’s exceptional boredom and subsequent mischievousness, Jay had no problem expressing his refusal to leave the apartment with Mike ‘looking like that.’ 

This had been the case when Mike had shown up to Jay’s apartment so they could go out to eat, wearing a shirt that said,  _ ‘I Eat Ass,’  _ in large black letters. 

“Nope.”

“What?” Mike said as a smirk pulled at his mouth.

“You know what. That,” Jay had pointed at his shirt, “I will not be seen with you wearing that.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Mike said, “we have to break the stigma. Let’s normalize eating ass. It’s okay to eat ass. Hell, I’d say ass is better than pizza.”

“Great,” Jay said, “so you can go find some ass to eat and I’ll go get dinner by myself.”

“Wait, wait! Hghh- fine! I’ll change.”

But Mike had nothing to change into, so he had to settle for one of Jay’s shirts that was so small on him that it rode halfway up his stomach and it ended up looking more like a crop-top than an actual shirt. It hadn’t been all that bad; he kinda liked the look. 

But while Mike was comfortable exploring his body and finding all sorts of different ways to express it, Jay was reserved and uncomfortable at any blatant attention being drawn to his body, even after he had gotten in shape. He was toned and thin now, though during the winter months, he would put on a little weight around the belly and hips. Mike would never tell him this, but the feeling elicited in him when witnessing that soft pudge of Jay’s stomach was one of warm adoration. 

For now though, his torso was flat and dusted with what Mike considered nothing more than a blondish peach fuzz at the center of his chest and above his waistband. Jay had told Mike he had battled considerably long to grow out his mustache and beard to what it was today and had since made peace with the fact that the hair on his torso would be as thin and light as fuzz. 

Mike assured him that was the look that was ‘in,’ anyway, that, hey, at least he didn’t have to manscape or whatever hipsters did now. 

He was sure  _ Duncan _ manscaped the hell out of himself every chance he got. He probably treated his pubes like topiary and sculpted them into whimsical shapes like T-Rex’s or swans. Ugh. 

“Why are you frowning?” Jay said.

Mike wiped the look off his face, shrugged. 

He set the wrapped box on the breakfast table and came into the kitchen. Jay loaded his mug into the dishwasher, saying, “Surprised to see you awake so early.”

“It’s 10am,” Mike said. 

“And this is coming from someone who would sleep until 5pm if you didn’t have to pay the bills.”

Mike jumped up on the kitchen counter. “I’m a night creature. Like one of those big-eyed monkey things with the wormy fingers.” He waggled his fingers. “Or a… toad. See, I’m kinda like you.”

Jay’s gaze begged him to give him an excuse to call him a dick.

“And by that I mean allergic to the sun.”

“Dick.”

“ _ Ding-ding-ding!  _ You said the special word of the day!” Mike glanced at his non-existent watch. “And with so much time to spare.”

“Speaking of which, we gotta catch the 10:30 bus if we don’t want to be late.”

“Well hurry up and go put on a shirt. Gotta protect that pasty, vampire complexion.”

“Shut up,” Jay called as he disappeared down the hall.

Mike didn’t get to come here often. Jay preferred his private time like the little recluse he was. This was the safe-haven he had made for himself, in a one bedroom apartment perfectly showcasing his highly-influenced but ultimately confused style. 

Framed horror movie posters decorated his bedroom and living room, while more artsy movie posters held watch over the small kitchen. Mike in particular liked the sensuous poster in the bathroom, the one for _ Y Tu Mamá También.  _ It was the first foreign film he’d ever seen and it had really resonated with him. It was impart what had spurred him into stepping outside of his comfort zone and learn a song in Spanish. It had also encouraged him into seeking threeway sex, which he had mostly achieved if it weren’t for his growing disinterest and annoyance throughout the encounter. He couldn’t identify his main complaint, just knew this whole thing was sucking more than movies portrayed it.

Soon enough he was tucking his flagging erection back behind his zipper and leaving out the door. He had ended up calling Jay and meeting him at the park to smoke some shitty weed and laugh about the whole situation. 

Mike had no qualms about giving the gory details of his sexual encounters to whoever who asked, but Jay wasn’t like that. It had been a couple of days since they’d gone out to the bar. They had left separately that night, Jay electing to stay much longer at the bar with Duncan. Mike didn’t know if Jay had gone to Duncan place after. It was none of his business. But still, he was haunted by the thought at random times throughout the day, that feeling being the same one he felt when he had forgotten to turn off the oven.

Any possibility at finding out what really happened that night was null.

Jay emerged from the hallway wearing a burnt orange shirt with a smiling monster face on it. He grabbed his keys from the table and that’s when he spotted the box. He picked it up, turned it in his hands.

“Who’s this for?” Jay looked over his shoulder at Mike. “You brought this?”

Mike slid off the counter and crossed the room toward him. “Open it before we go.”

“This is for me? For what?”

“Am I not allowed to give you things?”

Jay tilted his head back to look up at him. “I don’t get it. Was I supposed to get you something?”

“No, no. Just open it.”

Jay ripped the paper off the box in two pieces that he balled up in his hand.

“They’re fountain pens,” Mike said because he was too excited to keep quiet. “Because you’re writing your screenplay and you were complaining about not being able to find a pen the other night. Now you don’t have to worry about it.”

Jay didn’t look up, just kept looking at the box of pens in his hands. Mike’s smile started to wane in the silence and lack of reaction and for a second Mike thought he had fucked up somehow.

Jay wasn’t like Mike. Mike wore his heart on his sleeve, most of the time anyways, and had no qualms about accepting kindness and love from others. He mostly attributed this to his shotty relationship with his parents, which in recent years was nonexistent. But Jay was difficult to read. He was reserved in his reactions, especially when he knew an action was heartfelt. It wasn’t awkwardness, per say, but rather a total focus on what he had been given that had him impossible to read.

“You don’t like it?” Mike said when the silence had gone on too long. “You don’t have to use them, I just thought-“

“I like them, Mike.” Jay smirked up at him. “Thanks.”

Mike just nodded, a weight lifting off of him at his approval.

They walked to the bus stop, the air feeling a tad warmer than when Mike had walked to Jay’s. Mike could only hope it got hotter before the sun officially gave up. He looked over and down at Jay walking beside him and regarded fondly how the sunlight turned Jay’s hair a blondish color, seemingly gold in the warm luminescence. Even his beard was two shades lighter, his eyes rejuvenated with a glow that made his irises seem lighter and softer than his usual dark brown. And if not for the comfortable warmth on their skin, Mike wanted the sun to stick around if just for this sight alone, of a man aglow. 

Mike’s immediate thought was that Jay wore the sun like liquid gold, and then he spent the next however many minutes of their walk thinking about what that meant and why he had even thought that. 

“How’s the screenplay coming along?” Mike said as they arrived at the bus stop. He was allowed to ask this much, just not request to actually read it or ask for specific details.

Jay shrugged. “I’m… stuck right now. I think.”

“Writer’s block?”

Jay hummed like he was considering it. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I have the beginning written but I feel like there’s multiple ways I can go with it. I’m just trying to decide on one.”

“Which one do you like the best? Like, which one would you have the most fun writing?”

“Just because I’ll have fun writing it doesn’t mean it’ll be good.”

“But if you pick the best way, it’ll be… boring, right? Safe.”

“Safe…” Jay turned the word around in his mouth, tried to dissect its meaning with the tip of his tongue alone. “I don’t know,” he said. “This is just where I’m at.”

Mike smiled in a way he hoped came off as encouraging. Jay must have taken it that way because then he was smiling a little too.

“You’ll figure it out,” Mike said. “Listen to your gut.”

Jay patted his stomach, nodded.

The film festival was a fifteen minute bus ride up to north Milwaukee. 

They talked about movies they had recently seen on the way and shared titles of other much worse movies they had been ogling for their next movie night. Those nights consisted of a homemade meal of varying quality, plenty of beer, and a shitty movie that would leave them in stitches and have them considering giving up whatever they had just ingested. Mike looked forward to nights like that; it was surprising the things that made life just that bit easier. 

“I’m off next Thursday if you wanna meet up then,” Jay said. “We can do yours and I can make something for dinner.”

“I can’t do Thursday,” Mike said. “Audition.”

“ _ Shit _ , that’s right! How are you feeling about it? Think you’re ready?”

Mike’s hands balled into fists on his thighs. “Oh yeah. Completely. No problem at all.”

“What’re you nervous for?” Jay said, and it might have sounded harsh to those sitting around them but Mike knew Jay well enough now to detect the softness and consideration underlying his words. “You got it. I know you do.”

“I’m gonna fucking freak out, I just know it.” He sounded strangled. “Just like last year. And look how that went.”

“Don’t say that,” Jay admonished. “You’re being dramatic.”

“Exactly! I’m this nervous now— just you wait until the day of.” Mike shook his head. “I’m looking as forward to it as a root canal.”

“‘Well if nothing else,” Jay said, “I’ll be there to cheer you on.”

Jay had been there the last time Mike had auditioned. Not physically, since he was at work, but he had sent encouragement over text near hourly, fit with inside jokes and references to films they had seen together and it was enough to make Mike relax enough to walk out on stage and audition.

The lead-up, however, had been less than smooth. Jay had discovered a new side of Mike, one that was a stranger to him, fidgety and nervous and quiet. The whole week leading up to the audition, Mike had overthought every little thing about his music-playing ability and as a result, was tired all the time, only to be haunted by nightmares of failure when he finally managed to nod off. 

Panic attacks had gotten so normal at that point that Jay didn’t question it when Mike would randomly get up and speed out of the room. The first time it happened, Jay thought Mike was asthmatic and had somehow forgot to give him the memo after they shared literally almost everything else with each other. 

“What?” Jay had asked, craning his head as he peered up, wide-eyed, at a hyperventilating Mike gripping the kitchen countertop. “Can you breathe? Mike, what’s wrong? Are you allergic to something we had?”

And then Mike’s series of broken breaths had been interrupted by a dry, overwhelmed sob, and Jay’s face had softened considerably, his expression shifting so fast that it gave Mike whiplash. 

“What’s wrong?” Jay’s tone had been uncharacteristically soft, his tone lilting with concern. “Mike. What happened?”

But Mike couldn’t answer. He held a hand over his own racing heart, expression pained like he had just sprinted a few miles. 

“Are you okay?”

Mike made a half-shrug, half-wave, like ‘ _ not really, but don’t worry about it.’ _

“What should I do?” Jay asked, hushed. It had sounded to Mike like vulnerable uncertainty, an admission of not knowing the answer. “What do you need?”

Mike had turned on the kitchen sink, let the water run, splashed cold water on his face. Jay had watched, standing close, hand hovering over Mike’s bicep like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to touch. 

“You’re okay,” Jay had whispered as Mike coughed and dry sobbed in the direction of the sink basin. “Breathe. Mike, you’re okay.”

After that, Jay let him do what he needed to do and go sit on the closed toilet seat or edge of the bathtub or lay down in bed and battle with his racing heart and raging panic of the approaching audition. It didn’t matter where he went, though, because after a few minutes, Jay would quietly follow after him and stand in the doorway of the bathroom or sit on the edge of the bed, a silent presence fully comforting, just so Mike wouldn’t have to be alone. 

Mike was sure without Jay, he would have fallen entirely to pieces. It had been difficult to face the fact they hadn’t made it into Battle of the Bands last year, but Jay’s support had made the disappointment tolerable. 

“From what I heard the other night,” Jay said, and he meant a few nights ago when they had played a smoky bar for the first time as a new band and totally killed it, “you’ll get into Battle of the Bands. I know you will.”

Feeling a swell of affection for his best friend, Mike nudged him with his shoulder once, twice.

“What?” Jay said, but Mike didn’t say anything. 

The bus dropped them off two blocks from the festival. Dense crowds occupied the space between the two buildings of Milwaukee’s largest movie theater. There might be some B-list actors somewhere in that congested mess contributing to the clogged up crowds but Mike and Jay bypassed it all for the less-crowded side entrance exclusive for those partaking in the ‘Horror’ film selections. 

This side of the festival felt more familiar. Horror weirdos and fellow young people mulled around photo-op spots decorated with replica horror movie props. Someone working for the festival and equipped with something like a Polaroid camera around her neck waved and shouted at Mike and Jay over the commotion like a carnival barker. They tried to elude her but at her growing insistence, felt too awkward to not indulge her. 

They stood stiffly on either side of a Chucky replica standing on a pedestal. The employee snapped a picture and handed the slowly developing image to them. Mike took it, laughed, turned it so Jay could see.

“Why does it look like a family portrait?” Mike laughed. “We look like two dads posing with their murderous toddler!”

That got a chuckle out of Jay but he expressed no further interest in keeping it. Mike did, though, so he silently pocketed the picture for safe-keeping.

There was already plenty to see, much more than last year. Now there were booths outside the gate hawking merch from well-known horror properties and unknown. Mike wasn’t interested in this aspect but he followed Jay closely so he wouldn’t lose him in the crowd. He would be much too short to be easily spotted if they were separated, but Mike felt some kind of solace upon remembering the photo in his back pocket that he could hold aloft and use as a reference if need be, paired with a belated plea of,  _ “Return me to this tiny weirdo, please!” _

“Way bigger than last year, huh?” Jay said as he handed Mike a plastic bag heavy with t-shirts printed with monsters from movies Mike wasn’t familiar with. 

“Almost too big,” Mike said, looking out on the crowd as they stood next to the safety of the gate. “We’re not even inside yet. Hey, how much do I owe you for my ticket, anyway?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Jay, let me pay you back.”

“I didn’t have to pay, though.”

“What do you mean?” 

Jay didn’t answer. He scanned the crowd until finally there was a small smile pulling at his lips. Mike squinted against the sun and peered out at the crowd with him. 

_ “Aw fuck.” _

Duncan strode toward them through the sea of movie-goers. His uniform outfit and name tag indicated that he was, in fact, a festival employee. Sex or not, it was now clear he and Jay had discussed this very film festival at some point that night. Something furious ignited in Mike’s chest at the possibility of them having shared those words in bed after their potential hookup.

“Hey, Jay!” Duncan said, ignoring the unignorable figure of Mike standing close by. “Nice ‘House’ shirt!”

“Thanks,” Jay said and his smile was genuine, as was the dread in Mike’s stomach.

“Hey, Dick!” Mike said with faux enthusiasm.

“Duncan,” he corrected.

Mike furrowed his brow. “Huh?”

“We just got here,” Jay said. “This is way bigger than it was last year.”

“A lot more people interest in film, I guess. Think you might have something to do with it,” Duncan said in good humor, giving Jay a friendly nudge. “You’re always giving out good recommendations to the people who come into The Dig. Or at least you always give  _ me _ good recommendations.”

“Ah, well,” Jay said, sounding a little flustered with the unexpected flattery, “I just recommend the stuff I like.”

“You like really good stuff, man.” Duncan smiled and for the brief moment he peeked a glance at Mike, it would seem the joviality he had been wearing was gone in a blink. He was still smiling but his eyes glinted with a degree of what might have been malice.

Duncan reached into his pocket and pulled out two tickets. He handed both of them to Jay so he wouldn’t have to pass Mike’s ticket to him directly.

“Thanks a lot, Duncan,” Jay said.

“Anything for you, Jay.” 

This sounded like a fucking after-school special. How could anyone think this guy was genuine? He might as well be bathed in monochrome and live life on the small screen beneath rabbit ears. The 1950s called- they want their Leave It To Beaver assholery back.

“Yeah, sure. Much appreciated,” Mike said curtly. “See ya around.”

Now Mike was looking forward to a relaxing day with Jay, chilling out and enjoying some stupid horror movies, all for free apparently thanks to this dweeb. Mike smiled at first at the thought of having scammed him in some small way but it quickly disappeared when he noticed Duncan wasn’t leaving back into the crowd for another few hours of work. Instead, Duncan removed his nametag and pocketed it, then opened his scrawny stance to accommodate Jay and effectively shut Mike out. 

Mike looked on in total perplexity as Jay and Duncan surveyed the festival schedule Duncan had provided beside the tickets. They were acting like this was totally normal, like this had been the plan all along. Had it? 

“Ooh, yeah! You mean this one, right?” Duncan said as they pointed together at the films listed on the page, laughing over whatever commentary they were sharing. 

“Yeah,” Jay said. “It’s starting right now.”

“Perfect.”

They started walking in the direction of the theater listed but Mike was still cemented to his spot, only moving after them when he feared their growing distance.

“Wait,” Mike said once he caught up, “so you’re-“

“Done for the day. Yup.” Duncan gave him a harsh glance over his shoulder, then turned back to Jay. “This movie premiered like two days ago. People are loving it.”

“I’ve only heard good things.”

“What movie is this?” Mike said. It felt like he was playing catch-up, literally at some capacity as he rushed to follow them to the adjacent building. 

“Dulmont’s third film,” Jay said. “Do you remember his last one? I think we watched it together.”

And Mike responded, “Yeah, yeah,” even though he didn’t remember it at all.

Duncan did, though, because then he was blabbering to Jay all about it and it struck Mike as surprising how good-natured Jay suddenly seemed to be. They were pinballing opinions and ideas easily, and Mike found it irritating how he couldn’t tune into their frequency. It was all static to him. 

“Duncan,” Mike said as they reached the theater lobby. “You can hook us up with some popcorn, right?”

“No, I don’t think so, hotshot,” Duncan said and Mike nearly busted his own teeth at the nickname. 

“You got us tickets, though. I’m sure popcorn is nothing.”

“I can’t get freebies for everyone.”

“Well we’re not everyone,” Mike said. “We’re two people. Supposed to be just two people. Now  _ three _ -“

“Mike,” Jay said, “you can pay for your own popcorn.”

“It’s seven dollar popcorn!” Jay didn’t budge. Mike sighed. “Shit better be covered in gold,” he grumbled as he went off to the snack counter.

It was not covered in gold, but in blotches of neon yellow butter already being soaked up in the spongy kernels.

Once they were seated, Mike bit open the candy wrapper of M&Ms and sprinkled them across the top of the popcorn. ‘Theater Trailmix,’ Jay called it. Mike was its inventor, so to speak, but Jay had taken to it with surprising enthusiasm. He sometimes mimicked it at home, though he liked to add salt and gummy bears to his, even chocolate sauce once when he was cross-faded as fuck and unapologetically indulgent. 

Duncan reached over to take a piece but Mike did well to make it seem accidental that he was swooping it out of the way and holding it hostage just inches under his own chin. Well, only until Jay blindly reached for another M&M, at which point Mike dipped the side of the bag down for him before snatching it back quickly and eyeing Duncan in the dark. 

The movie was more serious than he was expecting. This was clearly a festival for movies that actually cared and that weren’t some poorly-played joke. It was quiet and atmospheric and moody and the quiet had his mind racing.

Duncan had gotten them both tickets. Jay knew this, had known this. Jay did not tell Mike. Jay also didn’t tell Mike they would be joined by this hipster hack. 

Mike glanced over at the both of them, checking for any evidence of their intimacy. But they kept their hands and feet to themselves. 

Okay. Maybe they didn’t do anything that night. Fuck! Why did he care?

Because Jay deserved better. He had been wary of Laura when Rich had gotten together with her, but she had proved cool as hell and now she something of a sister to him. But this guy- fuck, he wished he could tell Jay that he deserved so much better than this schmuck.

Mike looked over again and was surprised to see Duncan already looking at him. They stared at each other. Whatever front he was putting on for Jay was absent from his face now. He stared at Mike like he wanted nothing more than to launch himself over Jay’s lap and drive his knuckles down Mike’s throat. 

The feeling was mutual. 

Their eyes both snapped to Jay when he let out a chuckle at something the comedic relief shamelessly spouted.

Jay looked at him and Mike rose his eyebrows in question, his heart racing as he considered the possibility of being caught making murder faces to Jay’s new friend. But all Jay did was tilt an invisible cup to his lips. Mike, quietly but audibly enough to make the joke work, moved to collect spit in his mouth. Jay grimaced, returning his attention to the screen and Mike mourned the fact he had gone too far. 

Again.

He sunk down in his seat. He looked at the movie screen but didn’t process anything that he was being shown for most of the runtime. 

The three of them headed to the bar in the theater’s lobby as soon as the movie finished.

“A glass of Pabst will probably be, what?” Jay said. “Nine, ten dollars?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mike said. “I’ll get it-“

Duncan swooped in. “No, I got it. I’ll use my employee discount.”

“I thought you couldn’t afford to give out freebies,” Mike shot back. 

“I won’t get fired over one drink.”

“Yeah, I sure hope not.”

With arms crossed over his chest, Mike watched Duncan saunter back over with a tall glass of beer in his hand. 

“Here you are,” he said with a big smile as he handed over the beer. 

“Thanks,” Jay said and drank it down, more preoccupied with the schedule and drink in his hand than any glares being shared between the other two men. 

“What about this one?” he said. “Says it’s like  _ Friday the 13th  _ meets  _ Antiviral.” _

“Did you ever see his short film?” Duncan asked. “ _ Please Speak Continuously? _ ”

Jay hummed, snapped his fingers. “Oh yeah! Yeah, that was a really good one. I forgot he did that.”

Mike couldn’t hold back his scoff. Both Jay and Duncan turned to look at him and it was a little jarring, being their sudden focus after they had avoided him this long.

“What?” Mike said. He gestured to Duncan. “You say some weird shit,” he gestured to Jay, “and you go ‘of course.’ Of course he’s seen that one. Of course, of course.”

Jay rolled his eyes. “I just watch a lot of movies, okay?”

“Okay,” Mike said, “and I do too.”

“What do you watch?” Duncan said, and it had that subtle thread of venom in it, an elitist kind of feel suggesting imminent bullying.

“Plenty.”

“Not Brandon Cronenberg’s stuff apparently.“

“Nah, I don’t waste my time on artsy bullshit.”

Duncan looked him up and down. “Woulda thought art’s your whole thing.”

“I can see it’s not yours.”

Duncan smirked. Mike did too. It was less than friendly.

“The next showing is in fifteen minutes,” Jay said without looking up from the schedule. “Do you want to see that one?”

“Sounds good to me,” Duncan said, bright again.

Mike reached for the glass, his fingers nudging Jay’s just enough to draw his attention. Without a thought, Jay handed him the beer and man, had beer never tasted better. Nothing could beat the coolness down his throat and the irritated glare Duncan was boring into him. 

_ “Ahh~” _ Mike sighed after licking his lips and depositing the glass back in Jay’s awaiting hand. “Let’s go!”

They found a seat near the front of the theater. Jay and Duncan talked and laughed before the film started over references Mike didn’t get and movies he had never seen, so Mike turned to his phone for a distraction.

They had a new group chat for the band. Donnie had been kicked and replaced with Colin and Jim. While Jim made coherent sense in his short, clear cut texts, Colin almost exclusively texted in gifs. He was a bottomless well of moving images for every reaction and emotion, some of which were surprisingly unique. 

When Mike had asked them what time worked best for practices, Colin had almost immediately sent a very long gif of a breakdancing cartoon clock, who was apparently very talented given the complexity of his routine. This dancing clock spun on the ground and eventually struck a pose that revealed his gloved hand pointing to the 7 on his clock-face. 

Mike had been as impressed as he was peeved about his time having been wasted. 

Mike took to the group chat now and typed out a lengthy message about the situation he was in and how lame it was to be forced to interact with this passive-aggressive stranger. But then he waited for a second and shamefully deleted the message without sending it. A disgusting part of himself hated hanging out with Duncan but he knew that was unfair because Jay hung out with Mike’s friends all the time and this was the least Mike could do. Maybe the difference was that Mike’s friends were honest and real, accepting and not pompous and judgmental. Duncan seemed to make Jay happy, anyway, and that was enough for Mike to swallow his annoyance and keep it all to himself. 

The movie started, ended and then they went to another.

This time Mike was behind Jay and Duncan on the escalator leading to the second floor of the theater. He looked up at them standing close and laughing about something he couldn’t hear and, at this point, didn’t care about. It really didn’t matter because he would never know what they were talking about, would never have as an extensive of a movie knowledge as Duncan had. 

The next movie was a monster flick. It had Jay’s favorite thing in the world- puppets. The little rubber ghouls wreaked havoc on a small town as the protagonist and her boyfriend tried to expose the truth of a portal to Hell being hidden in the basement of the local university. 

This one was grossing Mike out. Buckets of blood bathed each of these pretty people and each monster puppet was uglier than the last. 

“Fuck,” Mike whispered under his breath when there was a gruesome closeup of a monster claw slicing through a person’s belly. 

The audience gasped at the next jump scare and while both Mike and Jay considered them exhausting, they could not combat the initial jolt of shock that rocked them. 

Mike drew in a sharp inhale through his lips and whiteknuckled the armrests. Jay was similarly taken by surprise, but in his frightened shock had been drawn to clutch a handful of his shirt over his belly, while he dug his fingernails into Mike’s wrist with the other. 

It took another second before the shock wore off enough for Jay to realize where his hand had gone. He joined Mike’s gaze to his wrist, and quickly retracted his hand, returning them to his own lap.

Like most movies he watched, Mike was intrigued most by the romantic storyline. This was a relative secret but the truth nonetheless. There had been a sex scene near the beginning that was spicy and the subsequent kisses the two protagonists’ shared as they hacked through monsters struck him as especially romantic.

Which made the part when they were separated from each other by monsters even tougher for him to watch. 

The female protagonist screamed and cried as her boyfriend was drug into the woods by a monsterish tentacle. Mike dipped his head and closed his eyes. When he opened then again, he saw Jay in his periphery staring at him. 

The characters whose names he couldn’t remember and that ultimately didn’t matter met again at the monster’s lair. He was imprisoned in some sort of hellish cell, and she was reaching for him and he was reaching for her but she couldn’t get to him, couldn’t hold him, couldn’t rescue him. There was something between them holding them apart even when they were still so close. It was almost too much, too raw or something that it was getting uncomfortable. Mike had to look away again, this time huffing in exasperation. 

He was glad when it finally ended, though he felt exceptionally embarrassed by his genuine reaction to a stupid horror movie. Jay was giving him concerned glances with a move of his mouth like he wanted to say something or ask him if he was okay, but he didn’t cut off Duncan’s constant talking. 

Duncan didn’t stop talking between movies. A part of Mike thought it was pure obliviousness to appropriate social communication while the other concocted a conspiracy that Duncan was actually doing it on purpose, addressing Jay and engaging him so often that Jay could not devote his attention to anything else.

Mike wasn’t sure if he was just being pissy and paranoid, or if he was really onto something. He hated that this supposed-to-be fun day had ushered him into his own personal crisis. 

Time did not have Mike and Duncan warming up to each other. The longer they were in each other’s vicinity, the more they grated on the other’s nerves. Jay wasn’t completely oblivious, but it would seem he was electing to not engage in whatever their unofficial feud was. Jay would shoot him warning glances when Mike bit back a little too obviously and Mike’s eyebrows would shoot high up his forehead, a look of wounded shock coming across his face because it wasn’t fair that Jay was only looking at him like that. Mike wanted to point at Duncan and exclaim, _ “Yell at him too! He’s the one trying to get in your fucking pants! I’m trying to keep you away from this skeeze, but you’re falling for it!” _

Instead, Mike just grumbled his frustration to no one, his posture deflating as he stalked down theater hallways after Jay and two-faced, Dick. 

_ Oops- _ he meant, Duncan. 

The next screening was packed. Excited chatter filled the air in a constant hum and every visible seat was taken. Now Mike felt even more alienated, like he was the sole one out of the loop on whatever the excitement was. 

The three of them stood awkwardly to the side as they scanned the seats, those seated most closely to them staring unabashedly. Mike scratched the back of his neck when he heard the two women closest to him and looking at him murmur something and giggle.

“Over there.” Duncan pointed up, across the theater. Jay shifted his weight onto his toes and craned his head as he tried to spot the aforementioned seats but Duncan put a hand on his shoulder and assured him there was a place for them. 

“Hey,” Mike went to say, but they were already walking off without him toward what he could now see was a two seat spot. 

Jay looked back at Mike in mild confusion but Duncan continued guiding him in the direction of the seats. Mike didn’t even wait, just turned on his heel and walked out the exit. 

He didn’t know who to be angry at. He didn’t even know if he should be angry at all. Whatever he was feeling was all confused in his mind. 

They were all grown men but Duncan’s actions felt suspiciously high school, very ‘drama’ and petty. Mike hadn’t fared all that well in high school. Sure he had his group of close friends but the jocks were relentless, as were his parents at that time. He had to learn how to be tough, but only found it exhausting.

Maybe on a subconscious level, Mike had fled to the secure arms of hair dye and leather, that intimidating aesthetic, just so people would leave him alone. Jay could look right through it, though, always had been able to. Duncan couldn’t. He was a stranger, but still so familiar in his meanstreak. 

“Fuck this,” Mike hissed as he crossed the theater lobby and left out the doors, because he refused to stick around bad vibes like this. He had done that once, and never again. 

He fished into his pocket and withdrew a cigarette from the mostly empty pack he kept on him. Old habit. Nasty habit, really. He had quit for the most part but kept this crumpled old pack on him as a last resort, a last saving grace. 

Another festival employee caught him before he could pass and practically forced him in front of a seven foot tall replica of an alien queen. She loomed over him menacingly, her ribbed and pointed tail hooked around his front. 

Terribleness loomed but Mike already felt defeated. 

He lit the cigarette and took a deep drag, exhaling just as the camera’s flash went off. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr: @marasamoon. I give updates, thoughts, even memes about this fic on my blog under the tag ‘#efil’, so check that out if you’re interested!
> 
> I’m also thinking about making a Spotify playlist of all the music mentioned in this fic, but only if people are interested. So tell me if that’d be something you’d want. Thanks!


	7. Chapter 7

And so began the week of Hell.

The sun was long gone. Copious amounts of snow now blanketed every bit of Milwaukee. It was the perfect gloomy backdrop that made visible Mike’s own inner feelings toward the quickly approaching audition. 

With the weather like this, the streets were relatively empty. Mike hunkered down in his leather jacket at the next gust of blistering wind as he walked down the sidewalk. He only passed two people his entire walk, a couple, who refused to wear the harsh effects of the cold because they were together, hand in hand and happy.

Mike passed by them behind the shield of his black collar, alone and freezing.

Mike checked his phone again as he came toward the corner of the block. He had texted Jay seven hours ago and had yet to get a response. It was unusual that Jay would leave him on read for this long, but he tried not to read too much into it.

Wasn’t it strange, Mike thought, that Duncan comes around and suddenly Jay’s so busy? Jay hadn’t admitted that’s what he was turning down last week’s movie night for or why he couldn’t go out for tacos or why he wasn’t responding to text, but it wasn’t a stretch, was it?

Stupid Duncan. Stealing his best friend from him.

But this anger was simmering into something uncomfortably cold and depressive as the days went on. Maybe Duncan really did have something he didn’t. Whatever Jay saw in Duncan he must not have seen in Mike.

Mike hated that he had thought so much about this subject but he had never had someone he was as close to as Jay, who sometimes he felt must have X-Ray vision, the way he could see through Mike and know him and understand him. That sort of relationship he knew only came around once in a lifetime and it was slipping away. Mike knew as much because he had gone through it before, this separation of friends and bandmates and significant others until they were nothing more than strangers.

He couldn’t voice this concern, however, when it felt so silly and dramatic to those who hadn’t gone through the same like he had. He was a veteran at this kind of slow abandonment, and fuck if it didn’t hurt more this time around. 

Mike closed his texts, double checked the address Colin had given him in four separate gifs, and pocketed his phone. He took a right and thought there was nothing to worry about; he’d see Jay later, he was sure.

An hour ago, Colin had texted Mike that he and Jim were in the middle of unpacking moving boxes at their new apartment, of which Mike walked up to now, opening the door after flashing his ID to security and boarding the elevator. This might have felt a lot like work but Mike had only elected to help because his own apartment was so quiet and empty and dark with Jay suddenly so busy, and it was giving him the heebie jeebies. 

A lot suddenly seemed harder as the audition approached, like sitting at home alone and trying to smile at Colin in greeting when he answered the door. 

It was two bedrooms but just shitty enough to not break the bank. Boxes cluttered the mostly empty living room and Colin’s bedroom.

“Grab one and start unpacking,” Colin said, so Mike grabbed the nearest box and joined his two new friends and bandmates on the ground.

They had arrived only a week and a half ago to America. This decision came after feeling stagnant for the past few years in every aspect. They had concluded a change of scenery and a life in a new country would bring forth the sort of growth they had been searching for. 

Colin was good to go; he had dual-citizenship. 

“Dad’s all American,” he explained as he folded one of his shirts fetched from the bottom of a box. “Lived in Connecticut before moving up to Toronto.”

He considered himself Canadian though because it was all he had known growing up. Plus, he didn’t want to take any responsibility for the United States. 

Mike considered Colin very lucky.

Jim wasn’t so lucky, though. He was full Canadian and therefore encountered some trouble with the whole immigration thing. He managed to secure a student visa at the last second, but that meant he had to enroll in the local university here in Milwaukee. Luckily, one class was all he needed for the visa to be considered valid.

Colin did most of the work looking through the course catalogue while Mike and Jim went through boxes.

“What about sculpting? That would be fun, Jim.”

“Uh-huh,” Jim said absently as he tore open another cardboard box and surveyed its contents. He brought out a tattered, flat box from within. “Why did you bring Body Rap?”

Colin shrugged. “Why not?”

This existence under the same roof wasn’t new for them. Back in Canada, they had lived together on their own starting at eighteen but even before that, took turns living at the other’s house all throughout middle school, junior high, and high school.

“My mom got even weeks,” Jim said.

“Mine got odds,” Colin said.

Mike couldn’t decide how he felt about their relationship. It was endearing but also weirdly codependent in a way that he thought was either worrying or next-level. Maybe in the same way Europe was tuned in to the next big bands and hit songs before the US, so too were Canadians way ahead in relationship dynamics and Americans could only dream of catching up.

Mike had only gotten together with them in person about four times— twice at the bar, twice at practice— but that was plenty enough to get a good look at the way they functioned together.

During practice, they spoke through their instruments. Jim would start up with that bass the same color as the Canadian snow and Colin would play with him, the notes coming forth from beneath his fingers leaping like little lambs back and forth over the thrumming bassline Jim had erected.

Similarly, a nod was completely understood to be a cue to hit the next few notes hard, a tilt of the head the instruction to deviate to another key, the jut of a chin an order to get it the fuck together, the smile that followed a single thanks that contained the luminescents of multitudes. 

Mike felt behind, but after a two hour practice, decided he would never know what they were saying to each other and then felt better about never having to learn it.

He guessed he and Jay had something similar; and no one would ever know that language.

Outside of practice, they talked close and with a certain domesticity. Mike looked on, curious, even now like it was an equation he was trying to work out. They were sharing a single Gatorade now, not from opposite ends of the rim but from a single, slobbery straw that Colin kept in his mouth and had flattened the end of with his teeth. Jim had no issue putting Colin’s chew toy in his own mouth when Colin passed it over to him, though. Jim sucked the blue liquid down and foreign saliva down with it. 

“You’re quiet,” Jim said to Mike who hadn’t said a word this entire time. “Why are you so quiet?”

“Are you two, together?” Mike asked unabashadley, wanted Jim to be careful what he wished for. “I mean.  _ Together _ together.”

Jim and Colin looked at each other, looked back at Mike. 

“I don’t think so,” Colin said.

“You don’t think so?”

“Well,” Colin said, taking the Gatorade back and biting the straw between his teeth again, “I think it’s more complicated than a simple yes or no answer. Sometimes I look at him and feel like we’re two halves of the same whole, eh? Other times I can’t even look at him because he gets on my nerves so much.”

That made Jim laugh.

“In short,” Colín said, “I’m convinced Jim’s my soulmate. Is that about right?”

Jim nodded. “Sounds about right.”

This answer was still somewhat vague. Mike didn’t know what them being soulmates really meant for them, but he was self-aware enough to know that whether or not that included romantic or sexual aspects was none of his business.

Jim made grilled cheese for dinner. They all sat at the small circular table to eat but when the audition came up in conversation, Mike’s appetite left him. Replacing it, a subtle nausea and growing panic taking root in his bones, slowly becoming familiar after so many days living with it.

“We didn’t make it last year,” Mike said, a rush of anxiety coursing through him at that reminder, body telling him harshly that he was still not over it.

“We’ll make it this year,” Jim said.

Mike looked down at his paper plate, scratched the scald off his grilled cheese with a blunt nail. “That’s what Jay’s saying, too.”

“I like Jay,” Colin said with a smile.

“The problem was,” Jim said, “they hadn’t heard us Canadians before. We bring a little something extra they’re not gonna be able to give up this time.”

“Sure.”

“You’re not hungry?” Jim asked.

“Not really,” Mike murmured.

“Let me have it.” So Mike handed it over and Jim finished it for him.

After dinner and as they sat conversing at the table, Colin suggested that Jim should enroll in Watercolor 101. The class was at 10am and only an hour long, and Colin could always help him, hell, he’d do his art projects for him if only Jim taught him how to watercolor effectively. 

Jim nodded with a smile of incredible warmness, chin propped up on his hand. Mike could see it so clearly in his eyes how much he cared for Colin. It was something like love but far beyond it, like instead of their technical conversation, Colin had just recited a poem or whistled a beautiful song. 

And a single question entered Mike’s mind that he turned over and over as he watched them, but he was too chicken-shit to ask.

The only comfortable place they had as of now in the whole apartment was two beds, one in each of their bedrooms, but seeing as they were in Jim’s room currently, Jim’s bed it was.

Colin lay at its center, propped up on pillows and with his laptop in his lap. Mike lay flat beside him with his hands resting on his stomach and his eyes set on the ceiling. 

“What’re you doing?” Mike asked when he looked over at the sound of Colin’s fingers tapping the keys. 

“On a message board.” Colin turned the screen slightly toward him. “This one’s for alternative music. A lot of these people are punk. You appreciate that.”

And Mike guessed he did.

“People post music they’re listening to or working on. Here’s a song someone’s band just released.”

Colin pressed the play button available at the bottom of the post. The music was grainy and ill-timed, and there was a random sax solo near the end that was both startling and badly-played.

“Egh,” Mike groaned. “It’s giving me headache.”

“Sorry.”

Mike pinched the bridge of his nose as a pain throbbed behind his forehead, and he had the sneaking suspicion that this headache might have been the result of not sleeping well or eating much or drinking water for the past however many days. He had no one but himself to blame, just like always.

Jim entered dressed in sweatpants and a shirt. The bed shifted when he laid down on Colin’s other side and brought out his phone to browse around. 

Silence enveloped them again, and on any other day it would be comfortable but it Mike feel like a stranger to himself. The stress, anxiety, overthinking, whatever this shit was making his tongue still and his mind spiral, made the world feel sharp and offensive. 

“Do you mind if I stick around tonight?” Mike said, picking at a torn cuticle. “Just crash here, and I can leave in the morning?”

“Do whatever you want, man,” Jim said. 

Mike didn’t know where he was meant to sleep so he stayed in the bed for now. He pulled out his phone to check if Jay had texted him back but saw zero new messages. He put his phone aside and rested his eyes but couldn’t find sleep when his mind was racing like it was. 

He remembered once this time last year after one of his ‘episodes’, which Jay would inform him were better known as ‘panic attacks’, when Jay had sat on the couch next to him after he had finally caught his breath. 

“Have you… talked to anyone? About that?” Jay had sounded so concerned, but also so careful, like he was afraid Mike would bolt out the door. And Mike probably would have if he hadn’t been so wrung out.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Mike murmured.

“Really?” Jay whipped his head toward him. “That was nothing?”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Mike-“

“Just-“ Mike rubbed his hands down his face. “Just… be here. Right now. Please?”

And Jay had stopped his inquisition and nodded, had put on a movie and sat close to him, and his presence was enough for Mike to nod off that night.

Now it wasn’t so easy. Because Mike was reminded of other shit with a sick turn of his stomach, about how he had heard,  _ ‘Stop being so dramatic!’  _ during those times in his youth when he was short of breath or on the verge of tears, but Jay had offered in some vague way help, a cure that he himself wasn’t able to completely offer.

Imagine, and he suddenly did, actually addressing these behavioral problems with some doctor or Freud-like character, out of time and with a clipboard and a pair of glasses, looking down his nose at him as Mike prattled on about nothing.

His fingers trembled slightly over his stomach. He swallowed roughly. 

The laptop shut and the light turned off.

In the silence occurring for the next hour or two was plenty of possibilities of how he might fuck up during the audition, only a few days away now, but then there was that question in his head again, that one that had occurred to him at dinner. The one he had wanted to ask Jim but he hadn’t been able to make his lips move.

_ The way you look at Colin… Do I look at Jay like that? _

Mike scrubbed his hands down his face. 

Seeing them together was so weird. Mike tried to be cool, but he couldn’t stand it. It made him feel lonely, the way they rested closely next to him on the bed with each other. He had been the third wheel on some occasions in his youth, and this felt a lot like that.

He got up to go to the bathroom twice in thirty minutes, then walked down the hall to the kitchen at midnight, walked around the living room, peeked into some boxes and only found clothes and nothing incriminating.

He sighed.

One of the hardest parts of all of this was suffering in silence. Mike couldn’t really describe how he felt. Maybe it was close to something like the flu, in his body as much as his mind, but then someone might ask him if he had the flu and then he’d have to say no, and then he’d look like a big dumbass.

How could he tell someone that thinking about how much he wanted something and the expectations he set for himself made him want to cry sometimes, only when it got too much, only when he wanted it so bad? How could he explain it in words how this turmoil was more than anxiety, but fear, because he thought his approaching failure might reflect a deep brokenness or shortcoming in himself. 

“Hey.”

Jim huffed sleepily as he turned in the direction of the whispered voice and hand shaking his bicep. Colin, still curled close against his side, breathed a quiet snore. 

“I have to go,” Mike whispered. 

Jim blinked blearily up at him through the darkness. “Everything okay?”

Mike hesitated before saying, “I gotta get home, dude.”

“Yeah, okay.” Jim nodded. “I’ll see ya.”

Mike watched as Jim turned his back to him and envelope Colin completely in his long, lanky arms. It was a loose embrace but still, it struck Mike as particularly warm and sweet. 

Soul mates, or whatever that meant.

Mike walked down the empty and freezing streets at one am, got home and picked up his guitar and played for the next four hours until the pads of his fingers were sore and he couldn’t think of much except the discomfort in his digits and the notes buzzing through the air. 

The next day, he found work in a kitchen at a local restaurant.

“Motherfucker’s out with the flu,” the owner said as he handed Mike a stained apron. ‘Motherfucker’ was their previous cook, now presumably at home.

Mike was instructed to cook vegetables in olive oil to be served as a side to the main courses leaving the kitchen at high frequency. The kitchen was louder than he expected, with orders being called out and harsh orders to hurry the fuck up and every skillet was hissing and spitting. It was like a war zone.

Mike couldn’t focus on what he was doing. He was trembling slightly in his shoulders, making it hard to do his job. He hadn’t slept at all last night. After playing guitar for five hours, he lay in bed, staring at the dark nothingness of night and again found himself stuck on shitty memories he’d rather forget ever happened.

Jay still hadn’t texted him back. The message had been read, but no further recognition was made. A million reasons for this cycled through his mind, all of which involved Duncan. 

Suddenly flames erupted from the underside of the pan, overtaking the oil and vegetables completely. 

_ “Shit!” _

The heat scalded his face and had Mike stumbling backwards stupidly as the fire grew in size on the stovetop. There was commotion all around him and for once Mike wasn’t worried about any coming issues in favor of focusing on this very basic threat right here in front of him.

The other cooks batted at the flames and turned off the gas, all of them rambling wildly and yelling at each other for any help at controlling the sizable fire. Just then, one of the waiters ran in with a fire extinguisher. A cloud of white dust filled the entire kitchen and had them all coughing and swatting at the air for visibility and relief.

“Get out!” the owner screamed as he emerged through the thick fog of smoke, loud enough for those eating outside in the dining room to hear. “Get out!”

“Are you still gonna pay me?” Mike asked over the commotion. 

“No! Get out, you motherfucker!”

Mike backtracked out of the door and into the alley like a wounded animal. The door closed and the silence that came next was terrifying. Mike looked around but found nothing but trash bags and faint flurries of snow wafting through the gray air. Mike removed his apron and threw it onto the street as he left out the alley. It was hard for him to catch his breath. It was like the smoke was still in his lungs and he couldn’t breathe. That didn’t stop him from reaching for his pack of cigarettes and his lighter, taking long drags that felt like fire in his spasming lungs. 

Mike didn’t even notice where he was going until he was there. The Dig was still open at six pm and he knew Jay would be there.

Mike came in, turned to his left, and that was when he spotted Jay behind the counter. It was weird seeing him after not seeing or hearing from him for a few days. Mike almost expected him to glare at him, to be mad or something, but when Jay looked up and saw Mike there near the door, he smiled, eyes brighter under the fluorescents. 

Thankfully his register was empty. Too cold for people to want to come out, he supposed but that would stop Mike at all.

“Are you okay?” Jay asked as soon as he stepped up to the counter. A part of Mike wanted to fall flat against the counter, just succumb to the truth and say that no, he was terrible.

Instead he swallowed dryly, said, “I was thinking we could do movie night tonight.”

But they never did movie night on a Monday night. 

“I can’t tonight,” Jay said. “I’m busy.” Busy? “What about Thursday?”

“I can’t-“

“Next week then.” Jay’s nose wrinkled. “Have you been smoking?”

“A little,” Mike said, never mind him having almost smoked the entire pack he had bought earlier this morning. 

“Gross.”

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to your poor lungs.”

“Sorry lungs.”

“They forgive you,” Jay said in that light voice he did sometimes, those playful, little meeps of sound. Mike softened. Right there, Jay felt like a beacon. Mike had been lost but with Jay with him, all felt tolerable, nothing impossible like he had been convinced it all was. 

If only Jay weren’t busy. But he was. With what? With who?

Mike knew. He couldn’t make himself say it.

“Text me?” Mike said, voice soft . “If you’re available? We can do whatever you want. Go out to eat, make something at mine, watch a movie. Music, weed. We don’t even have to watch Star Trek. We can watch whatever weird shit you love.”

Jay laughed and Mike’s chest hurt. “Yeah, I’ll keep you updated if something changes.”

Mike left back in the direction of home. For the rest of the night as he tried to perfect his chord changes, he periodically checked his phone, expecting a text from Jay with news of a change of plan. 

Nothing came. 

That night, Mike had a dream Milwaukee was being terrorized by an army of repulsive puppets. 

He was racing around dark streets with an axe, and he couldn’t see them but could hear them. Jay was here, beside him, or he was until Black tentacles wrapped around him and drug him around the corner at frightening speed.

“Mike!”

Mike sprinted after him without pause. Nothing else mattered to him than finding Jay and bringing him back. But he turned the corner and there was no evidence of Jay ever having been there. The world was empty. Mike was alone. He was but a mouse in a maze with no idea where the exit was.

“Jay! Jay!”

Mike’s voice echoed between the buildings but Jay didn’t answer. 

Finally, through his panic and fear, Mike found Jay held captive in the basement of the local university he had attended, that Jim would soon be attending. Mike tore at rubbery tentacles guarding the doorway until he was covered in searing black liquid, oily and obscuring his eyesight. 

Behind the double doors, there was Jay behind a glass wall, like an enclosure. Mike hammered his fists against the glass window but it wouldn’t break.

“Please! Please!” Jay begged, hands pressed against the glass. “Mike! Please!”

And that only made Mike pummel the barrier harder and harder and harder until the sides of his fists hurt as much as the pads of his fingers cut up by his obsessive guitar playing. 

Tears streamed down his cheeks as monster puppet blood dripped off his face. The black liquid obscured the clear glass but he could still see Jay’s panicked face as he pleaded for help.

It was no use. All was hopeless, because it sincerely felt like that.

Mike planted his palms against the barrier and slid down onto his knees, hopeless at the aspect of ever being reunited with Jay, and in the nightmare he brought his face close to the glass.

“Jay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please, I’m sorry!”

Mike woke, sweaty and breathless, on the verge of tears but too frightened of the dark to do more than just listen to his own racing heartbeat and try to calm down. 

He attempted to find solace the next night at the bar. Jack and Laura were already there and already drunk enough to not entirely notice him. Mike threw back six shots of vodka in quick succession and suddenly there was a woman hanging all over him, saying he was fucking hot, so Mike took her into the men’s bathroom and fucked her mouth. She tried to kiss him after but he turned his face so her lips landed on his jaw. His post-orgasm haze was short-lived, quickly replaced with nausea.

Mike’s tongue tensed. His skin was clammy. He evacuated his stomach into the toilet next to him.

“Pig!” the woman spat as she left, slamming the stall door behind her. 

Mike spit into the toilet bowl, stuck a cigarette in his mouth to rid himself of the nasty taste. Everything was too confused and visceral that he couldn’t decide if he regretted that blowjob or not. 

Looking out on the bar as he exited the bathroom, the stupidest idea came to him. What if he were to just grab Jack from his jack and coke, or Laura from her shot of vodka, or just go outside in the cold and quiet and call Jay on the phone and just be truthful for once:  _ “I’m having a really bad time right now. I just need someone to be with me and help me right now. Please. I don’t want to feel like this anymore.” _

Jack and Laura didn’t notice him leaving, and Mike’s phone stayed in his pocket, Jay’s number left undialed.

Mike made the mistake of going to a gay bar after, only to feel guilty when a toned blonde approached him looking for a quick hookup and he felt uncomfortable with the possibility of not being what he knew another human being deserved, so as the guy pressed a kiss to his neck and held his shoulder, Mike said, “I can’t take care of you, baby.”

“No?”

“No, not right now. ‘m sorry.”

He patted Mike’s chest as he passed. “Take care of yourself.”

Mike left quickly after that, making peace with the fact that this night was a goner, and bummed a smoke off of a couple outside laughing over one of their phones. 

Alone in his own bed, Mike was itchy with the alcohol and a heady frustration that he guessed could qualify as sexual. He was torn between being horny and being sorry for himself, but the horniness won out and he snaked a hand under the sheets and palmed himself through his pajama pants and it was like magic how the hot twitch of his dick and the prickly pleasure cleared his mind of any self-disappointment if only momentarily.

Mike huffed forcefully out of his nostrils and took the other pillow not under his head and pulled onto his chest. He pulled down the waistband of his pajama pants and brought his dick to full mast with the encouragement of his dry hand. He wrapped his arms around the pillow and rolled onto his stomach, sandwiching it between his chest and the mattress. His dick throbbed, balls hanging heavy and aching for relief, and Mike finally found it in the narrow space between the actual pillow and the pillowcase wrapped tightly around it. 

Images flashed in his head of that girl at the bar that had deepthroated him, thinking now about how her pussy would feel around him. Then there was that blonde with the narrow hips at his neck, how he would have felt tight around his dick.

Mike bit the corner of the pillow until his teeth ached, hips shunting forward in a painful slide much too dry to allow full pleasure. 

And then there was an elusive whiff of something as he rested his cheek against the mattress, and he whimpered at the deliciousness of it, it’s faint thickness familiar to him but the source of which eluded him in this drunken state. He searched for it with deep breaths brought on by the exertion of his fucking, and he brought his nose across the comforter to his right and then his next inhale was the scent of coconut, warm sweat, hair gel. 

Mike’s mouth fell open as he unloaded rope after rope of thick cum into the inside of the pillowcase. 

The chill of sex sweat cooling on his skin made him Mike shiver, his groin wet and sticky as it lay in his spunk. The autonomous fuck had only tired him more without the promise of sleep and the bags under his eyes were beginning to darken.

The band was meeting everyday to practice. Winston had allowed them to use the basement the entire week leading up to the audition. Mike was always the first to arrive and always the last to leave. The pain in his fingers was nearly excruciating now. It was making it hard to play, if not for Mike’s sleep deprivation and distractedness at frequent reminders of his anxiety and stress.

_ “Fuck.” _

His fingers slipped. Again. This was the fifth time Mike has messed up in the past half hour. In his periphery, he could see Colin give him a wary look. Rich avoided eye contact altogether. Jim, however, watched with a close eye.

_ Keep it together, _ Mike spat at himself internally.  _ Keep it together, you fuck. _

Then Mike messed up again.

“That’s a wrap.”

“What!?” Mike whipped his head toward Jim. “No!”

“We’re done.” Jim stepped out from under his bass strap. 

“You better put that back on,” Mike said while pointing an accusatory finger. “We’re not done until I say we’re done.”

But Rich was already standing from his drum set and Colin was removing that candy-red guitar off his chest. 

“Hey! Where the fuck do you think you’re going!?”

“Write it.”

Jim’s voice was quiet and level. Colin and Rich left the basement so he and Jim were alone. Mike blinked up at him, suddenly feeling cornered.

“What?”

“Write about it,” Jim said. “Play it. Whatever’s bothering you, let it out of your system.”

He placed a hand on Mike’s shoulder. Mike leaned into it subtly. “We can meet up tomorrow and pick up where we left off. Don’t worry about it. Just bleed it out tonight. Okay?”

Mike didn’t bleed it out. He was too high-strung to even think about picking up an instrument after failing at playing all during practice. Exhausted and feeling sensitive, Mike swallowed any reservation and pulled out his phone.

_ hey _

He waited for an answer from Jay, only to watch the message be read but not replied to. 

_ you left your hoodie at my apartment _

That was the truth. It was here on the bedpost where he had left it when Jay had come over and sat on his comforter. It was a whole twelve minutes before Jay texted back.

_ I’ll pick it up later _

That night, he had to deal with a panic attack that night was wickedly horrendous. It happened at two in the morning and Mike was sure he was going to die, but being a nuisance prohibited him from dialing Jay’s number, though he did consider for a brief moment, and in that brief moment, he was reminded of comfort and calm, but then he had decided against it because he truly felt like an annoyance.

So Mike stumbled to the bathroom, twitchy and hyperventilating, and drew on the shower. He struggled with removing his clothes from his clammy body and finally fell into the shower in just his boxers.

The lukewarm water cascaded down onto him with a force almost too hard. It pelted his face and fell into his open mouth, and he found himself trying his best to grapple with oxygen, panic spiking when he inhaled a bit of water and choked.

_ Pathetic, _ was the only word going through his head when he could think.  _ Pathetic piece of shit. Fuck you. _

His breath eventually came back, like it always did, and let his head fall back on the cool tile, panting and heaving against the rain of cool water.

“Okay,” he said to no one. “Okay.”

Tears filled his eyes. 

This felt like all some horrendous secret, like Mike had a default, a glitch, a deficiency, that he should be ashamed of. All someone needed to do was present him with high expectations and then suddenly he couldn’t breathe. 

He didn’t want to be alone. He needed someone here. With him. Just so he didn’t have to alone.

The only sound echoing in his empty apartment was the hiss of the shower and the choking grunts he gave as he held back sobs deep at the bottom of his esophagus. 

The whole affair had exhausted him immensely so he crawled out of the cold bathtub and lay down on the carpeted floor in the hallway. He was still wet and dripping but his breath had returned and his heart was slowly but surely. He woke the next morning freezing and with a headache, shaking on the floor and feeling like shit. 

Practice could’ve gone better the next evening, but he made up for it by going out to drink. Jack was there and they both made the unanimous decision to fuck it and get black out drunk. 

After an hour, they were approaching that place of pure unadulterated, sloppy shamelessness. They were spilling on their fronts and stumbling around and making no sense. 

Jack put a hand on Mike’s shoulder and the world was spinning for the both of them. Jack came in close, muttered loosely, “You ‘k, buddy?”

“I nee’ air,” Mike slurred. “‘s stuffy.”

“Oh yeah, oh yeah,” Jack agreed vehemently.

They stumbled outside into the cold that felt good on their too hot skin. They were both still cradling their half-empty beer bottles, probably their seventh or eighth that night after all that liquor. They would be fucked tomorrow morning but Mike couldn’t give a shit.

Mike missed Jay. He wanted him here. Tonight would have so much funnier and a lot more less sad if Jay had been here. But he was busy. Again. Mike hadn’t seen him in days and it fucking sucked.

“Good fir, Jay!”

Mike’s outburst shot out into the silent night, startling Jack who was swaying on his feet. 

“Wha’?”

“Got himself a new buddy,” Mike said. “Out with the old, in with the new. Y’know,” he tried to whisper but it came out too loud, “they like the exact same movies. And I rewatch old episodes of Star Trek and I like Jurassic World.”

“I love Star Trek,” Jack said.

Mike frowned, grumbled drunkenly before throwing back the rest of his beer. Then he flung the empty glass bottle out onto the empty street where it busted with a loud shatter.

“Jesus, Mike!”

“Fuckit. I don’t care! I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care-“

“Shh- Shut up, bitch,” Jack huffed drunkenly. 

“He doesn’t need me anymore,” Mike said. “Another one in a long list, Jack. You’ll be on it too. Rich is overdue.”

“What? You make no sense.”

“People leave. That’s all they’re meant to do. Leave.” Mike pressed his back against the front, brick wall of the bar and slid down it until he was sitting on the frigid sidewalk. “But ‘s okay. I don’t blame ‘em. I’m not what they need.”

Jack didn’t care. He was too drunk and now was humming to himself.

“I needa get home,” was Jack’s only voiced concern and Mike exhaled before pushing himself up off the ground and stumbling down the sidewalk.

“Where ya going? Mike? Mike!”

Mike didn’t turn around, just continued on home.

He woke up the next morning mostly oblivious to the things he had said. He was hungover and sick, and as such, slept in long into the day. Once he woke, he picked up his guitar and sat on the floor.

Mike never did understand sad songs growing up. He liked fun songs, fast songs, ones that brought him inspiration and brutal joy. He never got why anyone would want to write sad songs when they could write something else that felt so much better.

Now he understood.

All of that shit that had been swimming around his head flowed out of his chest and through his fingertips. It didn’t have to stay in him; he could bleed it out into low notes that made his heart hurt and his exhales watery. Rhyming phrases wafted into his mind randomly, and the song was either about missing someone very much or being your own worst enemy, maybe both. 

He was so into it, Mike didn’t even notice the front door to the apartment opening and closing. 

“There you are.” 

Mike jumped. He looked over his shoulder and there was Jay, standing there leaning against the doorframe, smiling. 

It was like a dream. The apartment seemed brighter all of a sudden, a certain warmth emanating through the air because Jay was here finally. Mike wanted to babble the horrors of this week to him, how much he missed him, needed him, wanted to tear his own hair out, to lose it, just fucking sob. 

“You said you had my hoodie, right?”

Mike nodded toward the bedpost. Jay crossed the room and Mike’s watched him almost as if in awe, thought that maybe they hadn’t been apart for this long before.

“I’m kind of in a rush,” Jay said as he picked it up and threw it over his arm like he could care less if he got it back from Mike or not. 

The light Jay had lit within Mike at his presence dimmed. Mike was hard to shut up, to deeply affect, but Jay did it with ease. That was the con of knowing each other so well and being so close; they held the other’s opinion at too high of a regard.

“Okay,” Mike murmured, gutted. He returned his head back forward and down, posture slouched forward as he cradled his guitar in his lap. 

“What’re you doing?” Jay said, sounding as rushed as he claimed to be. “Practicing?”

“Playing guitar.”

“Playing guitar?”

“Writing a song,” Mike mumbled down at the instrument.

“What’s it called?”

“I don’t know.”

The strings hummed under Mike’s fingers as he returned to his song, his attempt to move these new feelings out of him before they could stick around and ruin his night. He felt a little better as long as his fingers were moving but still it felt tedious and like a false sense of security, nothing more than a hamster wheel to ease his frantic mind.

“It sounds sad,” Jay said, softer this time as Mike’s fingers stilled.

Mike didn’t say anything.

“Do you want to come with me to the bar to meet Duncan?”

“No,” Mike said without looking up. “I wanna finish this.”

He didn’t look up to watch Jay leave. He was there one minute and the next, he was gone. 

Jay never should have come here. Now Mike missed him even more, wanted to bolt though the front door and scream down the street after him that fine, fine, he would spend time with Duncan, someone who hated his fucking guts, if only it meant he could be next to Jay.

But Mike didn’t rise. He couldn’t do it this time. It wasn’t in him. He was tired, weak. He felt defeated. 

“Okay.” Mike’s voice trembled wetly but fuck if he didn’t fight against the tears threatening to pool in his eyes. He bit his tongue and balled his hand into a fist, fighting that surge of pathetic emotion swelling in his chest. “Okay.  _ Fucking… _ shut up, you’re okay.”

But he wasn’t okay. He knew this and this time the lie wasn’t sticking. Mike dipped his head, and out from his eyes fell two tears landing on his guitar. 

It was almost orgasmic, this release of pent up emotion as it trickled from his eyes. He was glad for Jay’s absence suddenly because he didn’t think he could handle Jay’s reaction to seeing him like this. It would break his heart. 

Mike slid his hands up to press them over his ears just so he wouldn’t have to hear the awful choked off noises he was making. This wasn’t him. He didn’t cry. He hadn’t properly cried in over seventeen years or something. But now it rushed out of him without his permission. 

If only he were a stronger person. If only he was better. 

Mike sat there on the floor, tears streaming down his face and hands pressed over his ears, wishing he wasn’t the person he was. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big sad


	8. Chapter 8

Mike had been fifteen when he had first attended Battle of the Bands. 

That was back before he had a band, back when it was only a dream to perform onstage like those other bands that had rocked his world. Battle of the Bands at that time was held exclusively at the venue known as The Room— no affiliation with the film, just a cosmic coincidence— but now Battle of the Bands was more of a mobile production as venues and non-venues partnered and participated for a month’s long of weekly shows dictating an eventual winner. 

Mike had been amazed at the brutal beauty that was the battling competitors as he stood below and in the sea of churning fans. The music was loud and lyrics were all about things that mattered, and as a bisexual kid on the outs, it was exactly what Mike had needed. 

The pit had chewed him up and spit him out, but everytime he hit the ground, there was another punk there to pick him up and set him straight. Fifteen year old Mike had left that night with a black eye and a split lip and he couldn’t have been happier.

The management hadn’t really understood what great thing they had, though. The owner, Andy, was old, more interested in a 1950s, early 1960s idea of music and didn’t understand these punks when they started hanging around. His opinion would turn nasty, however, after a night of violence had broken out.

Mike hadn’t been there but he had heard about it. Everyone in the scene had.

Just another night of music and merriment when all of a sudden a wave of shit-faced nazi punks had descended upon the Milwaukee venue. Where they came from, no one could really be sure. Not anywhere around here, but there they were with curled lips and bad ideas.

The fight in the parking lot had been legendary. 

Single-handedly had the Milwaukee punks defended their beloved venue from hate that night, armed with nothing but their fists and boots. 

Andy couldn’t tell them apart, that was the thing. All these rebellious kids disowned by society that usually hung around looked the same to him as the racist bigots in similar black jeans and denim jackets, so he naturally lumped them in together. 

For two years, punk was not welcome at The Room.

When the old man traded it in for retirement, his young, music-loving apprentice swooped in to take his place. He had been there since he himself was fifteen, and at eighteen he was owner of one of the most influential venues in the area.

Luckily, this new owner had a great love of the punk genre and an appreciation of citizen justice. So he scheduled a whole slew of punk bands for his first night as owner and hung a framed sign in the hallway near the opening that said:  _ Nazi Punks, Fuck Off. _

It had been like returning home for Mike. He’d like to think he hadn’t teared up, but he probably had. 

“What a place,” Colin said, mouth agape as he stared at the pictures of previous acts which covered the walls of the hall from ceiling to floor.

“Yeah, this is really cool,” Jim said.

Mike kept quiet, emotional even now after a week of being overly emotional. Jim and Colin seeing The Room for the first time was like Mike seeing the building anew, every patch of stained carpet and multicolored lightbulb, and it only made Mike want this more.

He wished he could play it off but the evidence of his overthinking was written all over him as he looked more than a little rough. He hadn’t shaved in days. The growth was a medium shade of black across his jaw making him look weathered. There was also a bump of an ingrown hair just under his jaw and it was itchy and it hurt and it was just another little thing adding to everything else. 

When he had met up with the band at Jim and Colin’s apartment to catch a ride, Colin had asked if he was sick.

“Didn’t shave,” Mike had mumbled, but that didn’t explain the dark bags under his eyes or the messiness of his hair.

Mike hadn’t heard from Jay at all today. All text conversation had ceased since yesterday afternoon. He was busy with Duncan, maybe still was.

Again that imagined scene came to the forefront of his mind without his consent. It had come to him after Jay had left Mike’s apartment to meet Duncan at the bar. He had tried to distract himself, had squeezed his eyes shut and audibly attempted to will himself to forget it, but he was powerless against his imagining of Jay and Duncan flirting at the bar, sharing drinks, walking back to his apartment, walking close enough that their hands brushed together, and Jay would smile and Duncan would too and God, it felt like a sword piercing the center of his chest. 

Mike bit the sore inside of his cheek. 

They turned the corner into the front area where merch tables were usually set up. Now all it held was a single small table with a sign in sheet. Mike had Rich sign them in because he couldn’t risk spotting another one of the other bands already auditioned or set to audition lest he psych himself out further; Mike was barely hanging on as it was. 

It was all in vain, though, because then out from the doorway leading to the stage area came a band with their instruments strewn over their shoulders and held in their hands, and Mike’s stomach fell a hundred stories into the soles of his feet. 

_ “Shit,” _ he whispered. 

Tim Higgins and the Ball Busters crossed the room, a light sheen of sweat worked up during their performance wetting their collars. Tim caught his eye and smiled that shit-eating grin beneath his handlebar mustache. 

“Well look who it is. Mr. Has-Yet-To-Qualify, himself.”

Somewhere in his periphery, Rich hissed a quiet,  _ “Aw, shit.” _

Tim had always hated them. Mike had always hated Tim. They couldn’t pinpoint the origin of their feud but it had been years in the making and only soured with age. 

And Tim might have currently been glaring at with pure hate at him but Mike was unable to rip his eyes from the sight of the man standing behind Tim’s scrawny shoulder.

“Donnie,” Mike murmured. 

Donnie averted his gaze guiltily. “Hey, Mike.”

Mike didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t take his eyes from his former bassist, former friend.

It might have been hard to believe, but back when Mike had first met Donnie, Donnie was a cool guy. Less uptight. Funny. They’d go out for drinks and shoot the shit and talk about what they wished they could do, what they dreamed of doing with their music and the band, and the discussions about those goals and aspirations had been light and not at all serious at the beginning. 

Donnie wasn’t that person anymore. He was a risktaker now, and Tim, with his silver triangle hanging from his belt and his purple keytar in hand, must have been that risk. 

“What’re you doing here, buddy?” Tim asked Mike as he fiddled with his stupid mustache with the hand not holding his keytar. “I sure as hell hope you’re not thinking about  _ actually _ auditioning. Not after last year.”

“Who is this guy?” Jim spat.

Tim whipped his head upward. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, Jolly Green Giant. All you gotta know is I’m the guy whose band came in second last year.”

“Oh so you didn’t win.”

“And the band that did isn’t here anymore. They fucked off to Tulsa.”

“Oklahoma,” his goon on guitar whispered as a correction.

“Tulsa’s in Oklahoma, dipshit!” Tim turned toward the opposing band with a finger pointed at Jim. Colin took a step forward, jaw set and glaring pure death. “Nothing’s keeping us away from first place. Not at least you. We’re winning this year, buddy. That’s all you gotta know.”

“I’m not your buddy, guy,” Jim said.

Tim exhaled a mirthless laugh. “Smell ya later, losers. Better luck next time.”

They watched as Tim led his band away. Donnie looked over his shoulder at Mike with an expression that was perhaps one begging for apology or perhaps it was shame for having to face the man he had outgrown. Then they were gone out the door and into the cold of Wisconsin.

“Hey guys!”

Josh was all smiles as he walked in, oblivious of the scene that had played out just seconds before. Josh was only a year or two Mike’s senior but sometimes it felt like decades given his musical knowledge and acute memory of everything that had happened here and everyone that had played at this venue, and the other venues in town, and every iconic venue around the United States. 

“Mike, how are you?”

Mike mumbled a non-answer, shook his hand.

“You ready?”

“We think so,” Jim said for him.

“Hello! I’m Josh. I haven’t seen you around, I don’t think.” Josh squinted ever so slightly as he logged Jim’s appearance and bass to the encyclopedia of his memory. 

“We’re new,” Jim said.

“We’re from Canada,” Colin said as he pushed himself up on his toes, came back down. 

“Very cool! I went to a Descendents’ show in Vancouver a few years ago.”

“We’re from Toronto but we’ve been to Vancouver-“

“When can we go on?” Mike interrupted. He had no intention of being rude, just needed to get this over with before he freaked the fuck out and bolted out the door. 

“In a few minutes,” Josh assured with a pat to Mike’s shoulder. “The last band is moving their stuff out.”

Given he was in the presence of new attendees, Josh proceeded to give them a tour of the venue. They followed him down hallways, seating areas, and finally to the main room. 

The stage was scuffed with black marks from heavy boots of many great bands to come before them. Blood dried in the crevices between the dark slats of wood of the stage floor. Greatness had sweated up there, screamed up there, bled and spat and made a difference to the abandoned and ignored and misunderstood kid he had been. 

When Mike had first seen music being played up there onstage as a teenager, he imagined himself playing up there one day, too. And in his fantasies, he was heard, seen, acknowledged. 

Loved. 

It was so close now but it also felt entirely impossible. It was a dream, a fantasy, and stuff like that rarely ever came true.

Mike held his phone in his pocket, fingers tight around it as he clung tight to the possibility of a text, a call, any sign of encouragement or reassurance from the one person whose words meant the most. 

“That’s new,” Rich said, nodding up to the canvas-like stretch of pale material across the wall behind the drums.

“Yeah, pretty cool, isn’t it? It’s a projection screen. We recently bought a projector.” Josh pointed to the electrical box mounted to the ceiling. “Now we can play visuals, music videos, whatever.”

“We didn’t record anything,” Mike said. 

“That’s fine. You weren’t supposed to. The bands who will end up competing in Battle of the Band’s are more than welcome to provide visuals.”

“Is that part of the competition now?” Rich asked. 

Josh did an unclear shrug of his shoulder. “Eh. Let’s just say it can only help you. If you make it, of course.”

“Of course,” Mike murmured. 

The previously aforementioned band clearing their instruments off the stage passed by them on their way up to the green room.

This band was unfamiliar but their expressions Mike knew so well, as they shook their heads and frowned and bit their lips, one of them saying, “We’re fucked. We’re not making it.”

Mike swallowed.

The smell of weed was nearly overwhelming in the small room. It was hard to breathe and Mike struggled to inflate his lungs, to keep from getting dizzy, to stay fucking present and out of his head.

Rich was out there onstage making sure the drums were looking right and the stool was at the right height. Both Colin and Jim were tuning together and working to connect to the amps. Mike was on the couch against the wall only a few meters away from where the action would be happening. 

He pulled his phone from his pocket. Its screen was dark but its weight in his hand was grounding. He raised it, set it down on the cushion adjacent to him, raised it again, set it down. His lip was sore and blistered where he gnawed at it relentlessly. And then, with a whimpery huff of ultimate surrender, Mike swallowed all reservation and raised the phone in front of him so he could select Jay’s name.

The ringing was deafening to his left ear. Each passing ring made his muscles that much tighter with dread. 

He needed to hear Jay’s voice. He needed to be reminded that with or without this, he’d be okay, they’d be okay. Mike wanted Jay to pick up and call him a dumbass and an idiot with bad taste in film; anything Jay said at this moment would put a smile on his face, would encourage him enough to walk out there and do what he promised himself he would.

“Please… c’mon…”

And just like that, he was left to face the robotic voice of a voicemail box. 

Mike’s hand was sweaty. His heart was in his throat. He swallowed. Maybe this was all an omen, a sign that it was of no use. Maybe Tim was right. Maybe they weren’t supposed to be here. It wasn’t too late to leave, they could just sneak out the back—

“Ready?” Jim asked as he walked back into the room, Colin and Rich close behind him. Mike looked up with bloodshot eyes and a trembling in his chest, fingers tight around the phone in his lap like it was his lifeline.

Mike shook his head. “I can’t-“

“You can,” Colin urged. He came forward, pulled Mike up from the soft couch smelling of a million cigarettes and illegal drugs. His hands remained locked around Mike’s wrists in a grip that seemed as secure as it did imprisoning. “Listen— you got this. You want this so bad, well here’s your chance to try.”

“I’ve tried!”

“Try again,” Jim said. “That’s why we’re here. So we can take another shot together.”

“You’re not the same guy you were a year ago, are you?” Colin asked. 

Mike glanced at him. He did a tiny shake of his head.

“See? And we’re new to the band. Whatever you sounded like last year, whatever the problem was, that’s not a problem anymore. Because you’ve gotten better and so has Rich-“

“And we’re coming in clutch,” Jim said.

Mike looked over at Rich. He looked older than when they had first had this dream. They were so young then, stupid too, but they had been so brave. Where had it all gone? When had life taken it from them? Was it too late to call it back?

“We got it, Mike,” Rich said.

And Mike nodded. 

Together they went out onstage and to their spots. Josh was seated at a single circular table out in the pit. Mike watched as he scribbled a note on the clipboard on the table to his right before setting down the pen and smiling up at them.

“All right, ‘Best of the Worst,’” Josh said. “Let’s hear it!”

Mike took a deep breath. Jim and Colin held their fingers at the ready over their respective Arsenal of strings. Rich counted them in. 

_ One. Two. Three. Four. _

Then they were playing.

Noise poured out of the speakers all around them in a powerful wave. Mike shook and cried out lyrics drug up from the bottom of his chest. They maintained their integrity, but the added emotion only blanketed his words in wild beauty, so raw and brutal but beautiful because of their honesty. 

Mike’s voice cracked under the weight of tons of emotion he had barely been containing. Now they burst out of him like a legion of demons exorcised from his soul. If he messed up on his guitar licks, he didn’t notice. He was somewhere else in his mind, somewhere purely musical and authentic. 

The drums crashed in finality. The bass hummed out. Both guitars waned. Mike’s throat was scratchy and dry, something like a ball of rusty barbed wire lodged behind his Adam’s apple. Nothing interrupted the following silence except for the whisper of a pencil against paper as Josh wrote on his clipboard. 

Then he looked up again, smiled. “We’ll keep in touch,” Josh said, and that was it.

Mike couldn’t tell how it had gone. The audition had been such a big deal to him, that in its aftermath, Mike felt like an aimless zombie on the brink of falling into a waterfall of hideous emotion. 

“Did you hear that!?” Colin said excitedly as they walked out onto the street. “When you added to the beat at the middle just as Jim added that note to the bassline— like setting up a baseball and—“ Colin pantomimed holding a bat, swung it. Rich laughed his hyena-high-on-helium laugh while Jim looked on amusedly.

“Mike. You wanna ride home?” Jim when Mike remained on the sidewalk next to the car parked on the curb.

“I’m gonna walk.” He sounded like a ghost, half-asleep, dreamy.

“You’re good?” 

Mike nodded. 

“All right. Hey, Mike-“ Mike turned again to where Jim stood outside of the car on the driver’s side. Inside, Colin was turned around in the passenger seat as he rambled on to Rich who laughed and listened. “I think we did really well tonight.”

Mike didn’t think about stopping at Jay’s apartment. Jay probably wouldn’t be there; he was busy. Mike didn’t exactly want to be there even if he was. 

So he went home, mind finally clear but body ran ragged in anxiety’s wake. He stepped out of his shoes as soon as he entered his bedroom and didn’t bother to take off his pants or jacket, just slid straight under the cold covers. 

The exhaustion hit him with frightening intensity. He was so void of energy and life, that Mike just lay there with his back to the door and his eyes set on the wall, much too tired to fall asleep.

He placed his phone on the pillow in front of him. The screen remained black. No messages. No missed calls.

He thought to himself that he should get over it and then get used to it, because this was the norm for him: tolerated temporarily, left for something better. 

His mom, his dad. Laurel. Donnie. 

Now Jay. 

Mike liked to make a clean break of relationships but this time he wouldn’t be able to take it. 

Mike was somewhere just before dozing, a no man’s land of frustrating exhaustion and a numbness to all pain, though still annoyingly sensitive to every spike of yearning and heartbreak and sadness that coursed through him. 

The front door opened and closed. Mike didn’t react, not even when Jay’s voice rang out through the dark emptiness.

“Mike? You here? Hey, tonight’s plans fell through so I guess we can do movie night. I think you still have some of those frozen chicken patties, so I thought we could do sandwiches. If you have bread, anyway. Mike?”

Padded footsteps and a jingle of apartment keys approached. The floorboards creaked beneath the carpet as Jay came to stand in the doorway.

He chuckled. “What’re you doing?”

Mike’s jaw tightened. 

He felt anger first, a flare of fiery hurt that made him want to confront Jay about how unfair this all was. The absence was fine, okay; it wasn’t a crime to have friends that weren’t him, but it wasn’t about that. It was the part of blatant absence as soon as someone better came along, the ignoring, the inconsideration. 

But then the feeling was replaced with one of deep injury. That brief flash of fire was gone and now left behind was a coldness in Mike’s chest and entire body. This void convinced him of his unimportance, of his dramatics, of his deserved punishment for needing someone there for him when he knew better than to be so dependent on people.

Look— Mike was fine. He had survived. He had finished the audition.

He might cry if only he wasn’t so exhausted. 

“Hey, lazy ass,” Jay said a bit louder. “Are you getting up to help me make dinner? Or am I supposed cook it and bring it to you?”

Silence.

“Mike.”

“I’m tired,” Mike mumbled and curled further in on himself. “Wanna sleep.”

“So, what? No movie tonight?”

Mike didn’t answer.

“Fine,” Jay said. “I’ll go home. See you later.”

Jay sounded curt. Annoyed that he had come all the way out here for Mike to be tired and unfit to be present right now. 

His heart picked up in speed as anxiety reintroduced itself to him. He had made Jay upset. He didn’t want to make Jay upset. He was driving Jay away, annoying him, being a pest. No wonder Jay didn’t want to hang around him; he was a nuisance. 

The front door opened and then it shut.

Once again, Mike was alone and Jay was gone. 

Mike’s phone buzzed with a text message about thirty minutes later. He blinked slowly, gathered enough energy to grab his phone and pull it closer. Two new messages. From Jay.

_ Wait _

_ Did you audition tonight? _

_ yeah _

_ How did it go?? _

_ fine _

_ Mike I’m sorry. I forgot _

_ ok _

_ im tired _

_ I’m so sorry Mike _

_ Should I come over? You can tell me about it _

_ I wanna know how it went _

Mike stared at the message on the screen for one second, two, three, four, five. Then he turned off his phone, set it facedown on the space of the bed beside him.

Exhausted and emotionally wrung out, Mike hoped for sleep soon but anticipated that it might not come. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The punks fighting back against the nazi punks is a direct inspiration of and reference to a real world event that happened at a club called, ‘924 Gilman.’ Check it out if you’ve never heard about it; it’s a really cool story.
> 
> Also, I loved all your music suggestions! That was honestly so cool and sweet of you all to throw out songs the chapter reminded you of. Seriously made my night. Thank you for your continued support!!


	9. Chapter 9

Mike didn’t remember falling asleep, if it could even be called that.

It was light and unsatisfactory, a fitful sort of state that had him confused as to what was sleep and what was the bleery dark-light of early morning creeping in through the window. The air was cold at his nose and his jeans were uncomfortable under the covers. And then there was that incessant little tickle at the shell of his ear, again and again and again.

Mike’s shoulders rose as a first defense. He pressed his face into the cool pillow under his head and away from the piece of hair moved by the air through the vent or a spider snuck up on him or a ghost taunting him.

He had yet to see a ghost despite a lifelong fascination with them; if only he weren’t so tired could he make sure it wasn’t a playful poltergeist.

Now it was at his earlobe, flicking it with a light tap of a fingernail. 

“Mike,” came a whispered voice. “ _ Mike.” _

_ “Nnhgh?” _

It was silent for another second or until Mike could process that someone had just spoken to him. Now he turned toward the incessant flicking of his earlobe with a sharp inhale and blinking eyes, but as he looked upon the sight slowly coming into focus, he wasn’t sure if it wasn’t a dream.

Jay was sitting a foot away from him on the edge of Mike’s bed. He had a leg tucked underneath himself and the same hoodie he had picked up yesterday. 

He brought his hand back from Mike’s ear and deposited it awkwardly into his lap, perhaps intimidated or embarrassed now that Mike was staring wordlessly at him.

“Hey.” Jay’s voice was quiet, like he didn’t want to interrupt the cool silence fallen over the room. “I brought breakfast.”

He lifted a greasy, brown paper bag smelling of egg and sausage where it had been resting beside him. Mike blinked again, furrowed his brows in confusion. He wiped a hand down his face and squinted at Jay when he emerged from his palm, unsure if the apparition would disappear if he pinched himself. 

“C’mon,” Jay urged as normally as possible but his voice was subtly shaky in a way that woke Mike completely. “Before it gets cold. Sit up.”

Mike did as he was ordered, glad to do it whenever it was Jay, and sat up against the headboard. Jay slid over to join him, shoulder to shoulder, as Mike wiped the sleep from his eyes and went back to staring at him. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Jay asked.

“Dunno if I’m asleep,” he said, voice rough from the disuse and accumulative exhaustion. “Or if you’re here.”

Jay opened his mouth, shut it, looked down at the bag. He opened it and pulled out a wrapped breakfast sandwich. He handed it to Mike who took it after a two second processing time.

Come to think of it, Mike couldn’t remember the last time he ate. Well, an actual meal. The stress and cigarettes staved off his appetite and had him only stomaching a few hot chips and alcohol as sustenance. With the warm egg and sausage sandwich unveiled in his grasp, he practically dropped as he brought it to his mouth.

He wolfed it down, tearing at it like an animal. Mike refused to take it from his face, even as he attempted to chew before growing too impatient and swallowing down large chunks that he could feel moving down his esophagus painfully. He went for another bite and then another, the void in his stomach slowly filling as he accidentally took a small bite of the paper wrapper and had to pull it out of his mouth.

Mike, remembering his manners suddenly, peeked an eye in Jay’s direction.

Jay was staring at him. His sandwich remained in his lap, a maximum of three bites taken out of it and no more. Usually he’d make a face whenever Mike ravaged his meal with utter abandon, usually when he was drunk or high, but this time, Jay was silent as he looked on with an expression that was more patient and lenient than Mike had yet to see from him.

He seemed almost, docile. It was a rather unfamiliar look for Jay given his usual state of aloofness and emotional frigidity that had become his baseline. Jay had to be ‘tough’ in this way; it was all because of his childhood.

John wasn’t the best brother, a fact Mike would soon learn when meeting him at a house party a month before John moved an hour out of Milwaukee. Thank goodness. 

John wore the remnants of the high school jock hardass. He had been the popular kid all throughout high school and then college, graduating just as Jay was coming into the same university that had been John’s kingdom. This meant nothing for Jay’s ability to thrive as the company his big brother kept had no interest in geeky film fanatics. 

Jay had warned Mike inadvertently of his brother’s shitty personality by supplying a quick anecdote of when his brother had invited him to hang out with some friends at his mother’s insistence, only to be mercilessly bullied by many a middle schooler. He had forgotten much about his adolescence but Jay expressed a confused frustration about why he remembered this day so vividly, that conflicted smile on his big brother’s face as he looked on at his teary-eyed little brother with the overbite and the messy hair, John somehow glad that he was in on the side of the cruel joke constructed by peers rather than be the butt of it. 

“Jesus, Jay,” Mike had said as they walked a few blocks to the house on the other side of the university’s campus. “Well, he sure as hell won’t pull that shit tonight. I won’t let that happen.”

“I know you won’t,” Jay said quiet as the wind and it sounded sincere. 

As soon as they were through the door and met up with John, John had wrapped a muscled arm too hard around Jay’s neck, his jaw visibly tightening as he squeezed.

“All right, all right,” he said below the volume of the thumping music, reaching for Jay out of instinct so he could pull him from danger. John released him before Mike could make contact and Jay muttered his annoyed greeting. 

As the drinking went on, Jay became more indifferent to his brother’s incessant teasing. He was giving Jay a hard time about practically every little thing, from the shirt he wore to the way he held his cup, and when his sharp words were lost in the noise of the party and by Jay’s increasingly drunken dismissiveness, John resorted to punching the same spot on Jay’s arm, under the guise of some kind of brotherly roughhousing. These hits only got harder as the alcohol flowed and Jay’s expressions of pain were getting more obvious. 

Mike didn’t care about the familial relation; quite frankly, he didn’t appreciate anyone putting a fucking hand on him. 

So when John cocked his fist for another too-hard jab, Mike’s hand shot out and held back his bicep in a too-tight grip. John gasped. He leaned in the direction he was being held to relieve the discomfort but Mike’s hand remained locked down on him. 

“You good, bro?” John asked in a tight hiss. 

Mike nodded slightly, unblinking as he willed the red from his vision. “You good?”

“Hell yea.” Mike let go of him. John rubbed his bicep and tried to rectify the tension between them by saying, “Le’s get you a drink, dude.”

Mike had taken the drink handed to him but didn’t so much as take a sip, not willing to risk becoming too distracted by drink to recognize any further slights against Jay or get drunk enough to do something stupid. 

Jay had looked rather unbothered by all the rough touching that night and Mike knew that that same face had not been so stone-cold to the effects of out of control masculinity, once again proving itself through physical aggression. 

Often had Mike heard that he was a troublemaker, a violent guy, a villain, by those who didn’t know him. Mostly authority, teachers and the like. Never mind they didn’t know he had cried when someone had hit him in the second grade rather than fight back, how he had never once returned a hit aimed at him, had done nothing more than guarded himself, how he showed great gentleness to animals and small children, how violence made him sick.

Aggression had to be witnessed, and Mike had seen a smidgen of John’s and that was more than enough. 

“C’mere.” Mike had thrown an arm around Jay’s shoulders and ushered him as unsuspectedly as possible close into his side. Jay had to slouch but otherwise he fit perfectly into the cusp of Mike’s armpit. 

Jay must have thought so too because he eased under Mike’s sweaty warmth and the weight of his arm, leaning drunkenly into him. They listened to some stupid story told by one of John’s friends, all the while Mike kept Jay’s bicep under the shield of his palm, thumb stroking so lightly that spot where John’s knuckles had connected. 

“Your arm okay?” Mike had said into his ear as he had leaned down.

“Huh?”

“This hurt?” Mike pressed lightly on his upper arm with his thumb while watching Jay’s face for any sign of discomfort. “Right here?”

Jay made a face like he didn’t know what Mike was talking about. Mike took it as a fine sign, at least for now, or until Jay was sober enough to register an ache or soreness, to which Mike would treat with an ice pack and quiet support. 

Mike remembered that night wanting to wrap around Jay right there, become his shield against whatever shit his brother and his stupid-ass friends tried to pull.

Jay was looking at him like that again now, fragile, vulnerable, just like he had when he had recounted that story about hanging out with his brother. 

Mike didn’t know if he wanted to throw his arm around him again or lean over and bite his cheek, get him pissed so he would look familiar again. 

“Here, have mine.” Jay loosely wrapped up his sandwich and held it out for Mike to take. The hunger may have still lingered but Mike refused. 

“You eat it.”

“I’m fine.”

“I won’t take food out of your mouth.” Mike was repeating a promise he had made years ago, in reference to when he had eaten Jay’s leftovers only to find out he had been saving them for a twelve hour long shift at The Dig that would be too busy for him to go out for lunch. Mike had felt terrible and from that day on vowed, even aloud, of never taking another morsel from Jay.

“And I take it out of yours all the time. Here.” Jay dropped the unfinished sandwich into Mike’s lap. Mike didn’t touch it, just looked at Jay until Jay huffed and said shortly, “My stomach hurts.”

This curtness did not have the desired effect because then Mike was saying, “Are you okay?”

“Yes! Eat!”

Mike picked up the sandwich, took a slow bite, chewed too long, swallowed.

“You don’t have to be here.”

Now it was Jay’s turn to look confused. “What?”

“I know why you’re here,” Mike said, setting the sandwich down back in his lap. Jay’s shoulders twitched as if he had been caught. “You don’t have an obligation to be here or whatever you’re thinking. I don’t want you to think you have to be here.”

“I don’t think I have an ‘obligation.’ I’m here because I want to be.”

Mike looked down, hummed, though it didn’t sound all that convincing.

“Mike,” Jay said, his words brimming with quiet vehemence, “I should’ve sent you a text or called you or something.”

Mike shook his head. “It’s not your responsibility to be my cheerleader or whatever. You have your own life. I have mine.”

This choice of words was obviously jarring to the both of them; Mike caught his tongue between his tongue but it was too late. Jay was rigid. A distinct separation had been made in those words. It had felt like a dream that their lives were blurring together. Jay had cared about Mike’s music. Mike had cared about Jay’s screenwriting. It had only taken a week of absence to realize the reality, that one needed the other more. 

“Mike,” Jay said, looking at Mike’s profile, “it’s not, like, wrong to need support during times like that-“

“I know you support me. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter, because now you’re mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

“Upset, then.”

“I’m not upset!”

“Then why are you fighting with me?”

“I’m not fighting with you! It’s not your fault, okay? It’s mine.” The greasy paper bag was between them along with the momentary silence. “Because I’m not a normal fucking person who can handle stressful situations. It’s like my body fucking betrays me and I’m just tired. This week… sucked and. I- I really don’t want to have this conversation right now. I’m just frustrated. With myself. Not you.”

The heater kicked on finally in a whirring hum of white noise.

“I hope you don’t think I’m a normal person.”

Mike looked up from his lap. “What?”

“You said you weren’t a normal fucking person,” Jay said. “I’m not either.”

Unsaid: I get it. I understand. You’re not alone. 

“You’re the most abnormal person I’ve ever met,” Mike said with a small smile. “That’s why I like you so much.”

Jay smiled too then, an uptick of his lips that shined in his eyes.

Mike finished Jay’s sandwich as they both sat in silence. When he was done, he balled up his sandwich wrappers and put them in the bag between them. “Thanks for the food.”

Jay hummed.

Mike slid down the headboard and back under the covers, head coming to rest on his only clean pillow, the other smelling of sex-shame on the floor at the end of his bed.

“Are you going back to sleep?” Jay asked.

“I thought you were leaving,” Mike mumbled, eyes falling closed.

“Do you want me to go?”

“Do whatever you want. Thought you’d be busy.”

“With what?”

Mike didn’t answer.

The bed creaked as Jay stood. He set their bag of trash on his bedside table and crossed the room. Mike watched him, expecting once again for him to storm out the door and off to Duncan’s place or the movie theater or wherever. But Jay went over to the drawers against the opposite wall. He pulled out the middle one. 

The comforter covered the lower half of Mike’s face, only his eyes visible. It offered him a false sense of anonymity as he effectively spied on Jay shuffle through his own drawers.

Jay said nothing as he pushed aside the bottle of lube there, the silicone-based one that heated and cooled. There was probably a porno mag in there too, not genuinely used but rather collected for its 1970s vintage flare and its embrace of pubic hair. That was hard to find in print nowadays and Mike had appreciated it so much when he had found it at the bottom of a crate at The Dig, that he had to hold onto it.

Jay pulled out a sweatshirt by the sleeve and set it aside. Also set aside, the hoodie he was wearing and then his shirt. 

Jay’s pale back was smooth, toned. Mike had never really noticed the dimples at his lower back, two wells where someone’s thumbs could fit perfectly. Mike’s feet slid up and back down under the covers in a quiet  _ shoo _ , soles of his feet feeling tingly all of a sudden. Ans Jay shivered at the cold of the room before finding solace inside one of Mike’s sweatshirts. It was definitely too big on him. The sleeves fell past his hands so just his fingers peeked out. 

The sound of a button unbuttoning and a zipper resonated louder than all previous noises. The volume of the sound felt like a zap of electricity in Mike’s blood, heart responding with a hiccup of increased speed and palms growing sweaty under the sheets. 

Jay looked over his shoulder at him. Mike pulled the comforter up over his head. 

He could practically hear Jay’s smile. Then a pair of jeans fell to the floor. Something turned over in Mike’s stomach, maybe the sandwiches.

He nearly flinched when something made contact with his arm. 

“Hey.”

Jay said it in that no-shit sorta way when someone who he had no interest in was hitting on him or when he knew what he wanted and wouldn’t settle for less. Mike peek over the edge of the comforter. Jay stood there in a pair of Mike’s plaid pajama pants and in his sweatshirt that were too big for him. Whatever turned over in Mike’s stomach turned back again.

“Are you gonna come watch a movie with me?”

Mike’s eyebrows tilted upward. He nodded.

“Go take a shower first,” Jay said as his only stipulation.

Mike didn’t blame him; he could smell the growing tartness emanating from himself, could feel the heaviness of his hair as it clumped together with oil. 

He groaned under the hot spray of the shower as it loosened his aching muscles. He shaved too, brushed his teeth and changed into a pair of sweatpants and a black t-shirt stained with brownish spots of past bleachings.

Jay was finishing sprinkling the last few pieces of candy over the bowl of fresh popcorn still warm from the microwave when Mike walked in.

“You shaved.” Jay smirked. “I was starting to think you were trying to steal my look.”

Mike stroked his smooth chin. “Too scratchy.”

He felt more human now that he was clean. The grime and sweat of the past however many days had left him feeling lighter and more comfortable in his loose fitting clothing. 

They sat side by side together on the sofa, sharing two blankets taken from Mike’s room and the trailmix, of which Mike ate half of before it was set aside. 

“Wha’s this?” Mike said, sleepily as Jay started the movie.

“Ed Wood.”

“Oh.”

It had been the first movie they cared about that they had seen together. All the others were stupid and purposely bad, but this one was well made and they had watched it in relative silence, had seen it so many times before on their own but together it was something new, felt something like exposing their individual hands of unsaid anxieties and finding a mutual respect and understanding. 

Maybe they connected with this film so much because it was the part about wanting to fulfill a dream. Maybe another part of it was being so inept to handle such a tall job of one’s own creation. 

“Are you okay?” Mike said.

Jay looked at him. “What?”

“Are you upset?”

Jay huffed. “With myself, not you.”

“It’s okay to forget things.”

“You keep trying to play it off. It’s not just a little thing I forgot. I know how you are about this. I saw it for myself last year.” Jay swallowed. “I was so scared, you know that? The first time, in the kitchen. I thought you were having an allergic reaction. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Don’t be scared. I’m okay,” Mike murmured. “Don’t worry about me.”

Jay just shook his head, jaw tightening. His eyes shimmered against the light of the television, indicating a growing wetness in his eyes.

“Jay-“

“Stop.”

“I’m sorry-“

“ _ Mike.  _ Just let me be worried. I’m allowed to be worried.”

And he did look worried as he returned his gaze to the television ahead of them. Mike might have looked the same way that night John had used Jay like a punching bag. This time, however, Mike’s assailant was invisible and now passed; in a way, Jay had arrived too late. Regret showed on his face, frightened frustration, and it was becoming unclear who needed the other more right now. 

Mike felt emotional as the film played. It had a lot to with the past week of being overly emotional, which now left him with a hangover of sensitivity and painful softness. It also had a lot to do with Jay beside him, warm and present and finally here, and similarly too was Jay feeling this way; Mike could feel it in the twitch of his arm under their shared blankets, could feel it in the occasional bounce of his leg, could see it in the hard blink of his eyes. 

Mike didn’t think they had ever been this vulnerable together outside of their shared recreational substances. It felt better, in a way, as much as it was terrifying. 

Safe. They were safe here, together, in Mike’s dark apartment, away from the harsh outside world and all the frauds and hacks that occupied it.

This fresh contentment led Mike into a sort of sleepiness and soon enough his eyelids were drooping and his head dropped forward but then immediately he was shaken awake by a pinched nerve in his neck. He hissed, brought up a hand so he could press fingertips randomly in search of relief. 

“Your neck hurts?” Jay asked, voice soft. 

Mike made a raspy, affirmative noise in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Slept on it wrong. Or it’s the stress or. Whatever. I don’t know.”

“Here, lemme see. Lay down.” 

Jay took a hold of Mike’s sleeve, tugged carefully at him. Mike didn’t protest or even know where he was going, just gave in to Jay’s guidance and collapsed on his side, head landing in Jay’s blanketed lap. 

Mike made a horrible sound of pure wistfulness when Jay pressed his fingertips to the back of his neck where the pain resided.

“Right here?”

“ _ Yes _ , yeah.” 

“Yeah, you’re all tight.” Mike whimpered. “Breathe,” Jay urged as she followed the tight cord at the back of his neck with a firm press of his fingers. “You have to breathe.”

Mike tried to, though they came out rough and hard. After a few hisses and  _ ‘Ow _ ’s, Jay let up, his warm palm rubbing pressure-less circles over where he had just been. 

Jay let his fingers drift then, upward, so his fingers threaded in his hair. His touch was soft and light and Mike shivered with goosebumps at the faint scratch of Jay’s fingernails over his scalp. His fingers tightened in the blanket.

After the initial novelty, Mike was too exhausted to react, to hum or to shiver, so he just lay there on Jay’s blanketed thighs and surrendered to total bliss as Jay’s fingers stroked his hair slowly and softly, before drawing random patterns into the nape of his neck. 

“When’s the last time you slept?” Jay asked some time later as the backs of his fingers trailed behind Mike’s ear. “Well, I mean.”

“Can’t remember.” Mike’s lips were quickly going slack. “A week? Before the audition.”

Jay hummed in obvious dissatisfaction. “You should sleep.”

“You hate when I fall asleep during movies.”

“I’ll give you a pass this time.”

In the space between wakefulness and sleep, Mike could gauge Jay shifting every other minute as he hunched over Mike in an attempt to gain a peek at his face. Mike guessed he was trying to make sure he was okay, comfortable, whatever but it still jostled him slightly just as he was about to nod off, so he turned around with his back to the television and his nose just under Jay’s belly button, so Jay wouldn’t have to worry. 

Jay’s fingers returned to his face shyly, and this time Mike’s eyes fluttered shut at Jay’s thumb stroking his eyebrows. He nodded off into a deep sleep and dreamed of nothing. 

When Mike woke, this time a thumb stroked down his smooth cheek. He shifted with a deep inhale and the touch left him immediately, though Mike leaned ever so slightly into the direction it had been. 

“Hey,” Jay greeted quietly. 

Mike hummed. “Was I snoring?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” And Jay made it sound like it really was.

He must have turned down the volume on the TV because the dialogue was nothing more than an incoherent whisper. Mike remained in Jay’s lap as he listened to what he could of the television but then he was listening to Jay’s breath, the quiet inner workings and churning of his stomach, and it was surprisingly relaxing and not at all uncomfortable.

He could feel a tiny drop of spit at the corner of his mouth and he went to wipe it with a finger, but then his eyes were flying open wide when he heard Jay’s sharp intake of breath.

“Your fingers,” was all Jay said.

Yes, his fingers were in rather rough shape. The constant practicing had blistered them and peeled the skin of Mike’s fingertips. It felt as bad as it looked. It stung to touch things because his fingers were literally raw. 

“That’s from what? The audition?”

“Practice,” Mike said.

Jay shook his head, looked upset. In his conflicted silence, he took to scratching at the ingrown hair at Mike’s jaw and it sometimes felt like retaliation.

“How did the audition go?” Jay asked with his finger still at his jaw but now straying from that one spot distractedly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I really don’t know how we did. Jim says we sounded good, but I don’t know. And that’s not even me being humble or whatever. Like, I literally can’t tell you. It was like I was somewhere else. My head’s all fucked up.”

The back of Jay’s finger trailed up Mike’s jawline. His touch was too light, almost felt apologetic or like he was scared about hurting Mike further.

“I saw Donnie.”

“What?” His finger stopped. “He was there?” 

“With Tim Higgins’ band.”

_ “Fuck.  _ Mike, that’s terrible.”

Jay held his palm against the back of Mike’s neck securely, like if he could hold Mike close to his tummy, he’d be safe.

“Are you okay?” Jay asked. 

“I think I’m getting there. Are you still worried?”

Jay considered the question before smiling sadly. “I think I always will be.”

Mike fell back asleep with the TV a quiet murmur and Jay’s fingers lightly pinching the wisps of hair at the back of his neck. 

When they both awoke, Jay having drifted off at some point as well, they muted the television as Jay told Mike of work, movies he had recently seen. Somewhere along the way, Mike let go of his worry about Duncan making an appearance in these stories. Either Jay was sparing him or he really didn’t think twice about those days with Duncan. 

They laughed over funny interactions Jay had at The Dig, then laughed some more when Jay took out his phone and read aloud Redbox reviews of some of their favorite movies. Hunger reappeared in the hollow groaning of their stomachs and they rose together to venture over to the kitchen. Upon finding nothing in neither pantry or refrigerator, they put on slippers and at dusk, walked down to the small grocery store a few blocks away. 

The air was chilly and the horizon was lit with the darkest blood orange of a dying sun. Each exhaled breath was visible in a pale body of vapor in front of their faces, fleeting and fragile. 

Darkness was encroaching over their part of the world but when Mike looked over at Jay, he saw Jay wearing those vibrant ribbons of orange across his face in the darkest tiger stripes, the rest of his face a cool, stone-blue of night’s approach.

“How do you do that?” Mike whispered.

Jay looked at him and the stripes rearranged himself, one now falling over his eyes and making them glitter. “What?”

Mike blinked, cheeks burning probably from the cold wind licking against him. When he realized he had been heard, he just shook his head, didn’t answer. 

Thankfully no one was really shopping at this small store this time in the evening. The three teenage cashiers crowded together around register five, talking and giving Mike and Jay no more than a nod of acknowledgment as they came in through the automatic doors. 

“I was thinking spaghetti?” Jay said as he led them down one of the empty aisles.

“Sounds good.”

They came to stop in front three shelves crowded with jars of tomato sauce. Jay was focused as he perused them intently. Mike was semi-surprised; Jay struck him as the type to painstakingly make his own sauce from scratch. 

But the night was young and they were comfortably tired and convenience was key for times like this.

Mike watched him, standing close by like an obedient dog as Jay took jar after jar into his hands, read the labels and squinted at the ingredients. Jay bent down, mumbling to himself, and that was when suddenly an idea came to him. Mike smiled to himself and carefully slid a fraction backward, just out of Jay’s periphery, then did it again, again. 

Mike backstepped one quiet step at a time until he was meters away at the end of the aisle. He watched from afar now as Jay straightened back up from where he had been bent down, a jar of his desired tomato sauce in his hand. Jay turned to his immediate left expecting to find Mike there. Then he turned quickly to his right and the worry on his face almost made Mike want to call off the game and return back to him but then Jay’s eyes came to settle on him.

Mike ducked out of sight and into the next aisle. He waited there, wild smile unmoving from his face. Jay appeared then at the opposite end with a questioning look and then Mike was gone again, to the next aisle.

Jay was catching on now, as his own determined smile indicated when Mike spotted him again. Mike was no longer stopping in his pace from this aisle to the next, both of them engaging in a race consisting of Mike’s attempts to hide and Jay’s attempts to catch him.

Mike ducked down the candy aisle and sped down it in a loose jog, arms pumping and slippers not leaving the dusty tile floor. He was attempting to catch his breath by the canned vegetables but just then, Jay appeared in a smooth slide of his slick slip-ons like he was in  _ Risky Business _ , trying to find traction so he could race down the aisle after him. 

_ “Shit!” _ Mike laughed, and then he was gone. 

Mike felt light for the first time in the past week. All he could focus on was his racing heart and his panting breath and Jay’s smile some meters away. He almost wanted to call it all off and have Jay close again so he could take in that joy across his face, brighter than the fluorescents up above. 

The cashiers watched on in vague amusement as Mike and Jay emerged and quickly fell back into the rows of merchandise, though that look might have been more so confusion. 

Mike rounded the corner into the frozen food section thinking he saw a blur of what must have been Jay over by the canned soups. He turned the corner into the aisle and gasped in surprised delight as Jay face-planted against his chest. 

“Oh, shit! Are you okay?” Mike asked through his laughter, hands holding Jay steady by his biceps.

Jay looked more embarrassed than anything, cheeks red from the run and breath quick. 

“What are you doing?” Jay panted, trying to sound curt but failing miserably considering he was speaking through his smile. “Gonna have to put a leash on you.”

“So you  _ are _ kinky. I always suspected but I guess now I know you are.”

Jay hit his chest lightly with his fist.

Mike was too tired to continue their game and so fell into submission beside Jay. Given Jay had caught him, Mike held most of the ingredients in his arms and followed closely. He said nothing as Jay led him down the first aid aisle and gave him disinfectant, topical antibiotics and a pack of multi-colored bandaids to hold. Still, he felt warm affection for the man beside him.

They let the cashiers be and went to the quiet end of the store where the self-checkout was. Mike set the goods down on the designated table beside the register and got out of the way and stood behind Jay. Tired from running around and comfy in his soft lounge clothes, Mike yawned and swayed on his feet before coming to lean Jay. Mike blanketed his entire back with his front while Jay checked out, the bridge of his nose butting up against the crown of his head.

“Tired?” Jay asked for the second time that night, no indication of annoyance at Mike’s proximity.

Mike just hummed. The soft sound lilted when Jay’s slender fingers came up to the side of his head to gently brush back a piece of green hair that had fallen over his forehead. Mike peeked his eyes open and saw Jay looking at him in the reflection of the touch screen. Maybe it was the smudges across the screen that warped the reflection, but Mike thought he saw a look in Jay’s eye that was as subtle as it was lovely, this sort of patient affection.

Back at home, they set water to boil as the beef in the skillet was browning. The speakers on the nearby breakfast table hummed a folksy tune. The Bluetooth was connected to Jay’s phone, the music playing from their shared Spotify premium account. The shared cost of a membership was more convenient as was the ability to share music effortlessly through their master playlist that was largest and inclusive, each song added by either of them at any time, a new discovery or a memory of one summer afternoon a decade ago. The songs cycled through genres of punk, rock, pop, industrial, hip hop, rap, even TV show theme songs.

Jay took a step away from the stovetop, Mike watching him from the counter corner. He fetched the bandaids and antibiotic and came back over.

“Let me see your hands.”

Mike offered Jay his hands, palms up. Jay winced for him at the sight of his blistered and peeling red fingers.

_ “Mike _ . _ ” _

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.”

Mike shut up and allowed Jay the freedom to worry, to work through whatever inner conflict he was having however he needed.

He took Mike’s hand in his own. Jay’s hands were cool under Mike’s. He always had been colder, probably in every way, but Mike was there to warm him. Jay gently dabbed his fingers with harsh-smelling disinfectant on a square of gauze. Mike pulled ever so slightly with a hiss of pain as an initial reaction but Jay kept him in his grip with a soft hush.

Jay carefully applied the ointment with his own fingertip to Mike’s sore ones. He carefully wrapped a bandaid around each finger except the thumb on Mike’s left hand that had been miraculously spared. The burn of his raw skin beneath medicine, however, didn’t distract him from the sight of concentration on Jay’s face close to his own. 

“Thanks,” Mike said once Jay was done. 

Jay’s hands lingered on his ever so slightly, like he was afraid to let go of him lest he disappear into thin air or neglect his poor fingers again. 

“Next time, don’t play if your fingers are bleeding and blistered. Because that’s fucking stupid.”

“I won’t.”

Jay nodded, still avoiding eye contact. “Hurry up and try this sauce and tell me if it’s spicy enough.”

It was indeed spicy enough, compliments of the crushed red pepper Jay had sprinkled in it. 

“I didn’t know you were such a chef,” Mike said.

Jay rolled his eyes.

Mike set to stirring the browning meat as Jay arranged slices of garlic bread on a baking tray on the space of counter behind Mike. 

“Did you add this song?” Jay asked in reference to the song currently playing, something kind of poppy and once very popular.

“Yeah. I heard it at a high school dance.”

“You went to school dances?” Jay said, sounding shocked. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well I only ever went to one. Homecoming.”

“No way.”

“Yeah,” Mike laughed, turned back to the stove to stir the meat. “The only reason I went was because this kid told me this girl liked me. She wanted to go to homecoming but wouldn’t if she had no one to go with. She was kind of quiet and shy. Really sweet. Total opposite of my whole gig, so I was surprised when he told me she gave a fuck about me. Not a lot of people did. I had to have been a senior. I thought there was no way, but decided to take the chance. I asked her to the dance and she said yes.” Mike smiled to himself. “I texted her up a couple days before the dance and asked her how she wanted me to do my hair. For whatever reason it was important to me. Like I wanted to try, for her. I wanted to fit whatever image she had of me and the whole dance in her head because I could tell it meant a lot to her. She ended up texting me back, ‘However you want to wear it.’ I don’t know, I just thought that was sweet. It made me smile.”

“That made you smile?”

“I know,” Mike said. “Weird how little things like that can feel like a bullet in your chest.”

Jay hummed, his expression becoming a degree more somber. Maybe he had misinterpreted Mike. 

“So how was it?” Jay asked. “The dance?”

“Fine, I guess. Not really my thing but she was beautiful. Her name was Marianne. I showed up with one of those little rose thingies and she didn’t have one for me. Instead she had this little Sex Pistols button for me that she pinned to my lapel.’” He was smiling widely at the memory of simpler times when the world hadn’t seemed as overbearing. He still had the energy, the fight, in him to want to take on the world. 

“I wonder where she is now,” he murmured.

“Do you have pictures of that night?”

“Pictures? No, no. My parents didn’t care where I was and her parents didn’t take pictures. I think… I think her parents were kinda like mine. Just. Uninterested.”

They fell into comfortable silence then. The song changed to something else then, leaving behind pop and taking on something quieter.

“I’ve never been to a dance.”

Mike looked over his shoulder to Jay, who stood there awkwardly in his too-big sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants. He shifted on his feet, didn’t move his eyes from where the garlic bread he had arranged on the baking sheet on the counter.

“I was... a total outcast. In high school. I know— surprise, surprise. But like, not even the unpopular kids knew who I was. Some of my teachers acted like they didn’t know who I was. Maybe they didn’t. I was so quiet, I don’t really blame anyone for not knowing me. I just, kept to myself. I liked it that way. Well, I’m sure you know. ‘Cause I still am kinda like that. But I’m better now. Less… mad at the world or whatever. Still annoyed, but not actively furious. But, um. Yeah.” His brows furrowed as he stared down at the garlic bread. “You know that quote from Pretty in Pink? That one where she goes something like, one day you’ll feel this weird feeling like you forgot to turn off the stove but you did, and then you realize that feeling is you remembering you never when to your prom? Sometimes I feel something like that. My mind just goes,  _ ‘You missed out. You idiot, you missed that milestone of your teenage life.’ _ How pathetic and embarrassing.”

Mike exhaled a laugh through his nose. “I didn’t go either, so we can be pathetic and embarrassing together.”

Jay looked over at him. He smiled. “Sounds great.”

The song currently on, something by The Talking Heads, droned off and starting up was a softer song, one that started so quietly it was like the speakers had turned off altogether.

Mike lowered the heat on the meat and stepped away from the stove. He wiped his hands on the towel hanging off the cabinet and turned toward Jay.

“C’mere.”

Jay looked over at the quiet request, asked just as quietly, “What?”

“This is a slow song. We can pretend we’re at prom. Maybe it’ll squash that feeling you get.” Mike waved a bandaged hand, smiled. “C’mere.”

Jay opened his mouth to protest but the hushed chirp of crickets on the track was accompanied by a faint guitar that turned the world gentle. 

Jay shuffled over on socked feet. 

“Do you wanna lead or-“

“I’m not entirely oblivious,” Jay said. “I know how to do this-“

“I thought you said you’d never been to a dance before.”

“I’ve seen movies,” Jay grumbled. 

Mike smiled. “All right.”

Jay’s hands twitched hesitantly on their way up to Mike’s shoulders. His grip was loose and still somehow rigid. He was close enough that Mike could see his Adam’s apple bob when he swallowed. Jay had this skittish look in his eye like he wasn’t sure if he was doing something as simple as holding Mike’s shoulders right. 

Mike answered with a warm, reassuring smile and took gentle hold of Jay’s hips. Jay made a startled sound high in his throat which he promptly tried to play off by refusing acknowledgment or even eye contact. Jay felt small beneath Mike’s palms. His hip bones were like two juts of ceramic he’d bust if he wasn’t careful. So Mike cradled them gently in his cupped hands, holding him so securely but never too tight. 

Mike took half a step forward to close the gap between them so Jay didn’t have to reach as far forward. Even still, he was a little on his toes. He would benefit from a tiny box under his feet right about now but this was fine.

“You okay?”

Jay grumbled, fingers tightening atop Mike’s shoulders and Mike smiled warmly, something like adoration evident in the glimmer of his eyes.

Jay’s hands slid up a little bit more and came to rest at the back of Mike’s neck. He balled up his fingers in Mike’s shirt in a tight grip. Something swelled in Mike’s rib cage at those small, twitchy tugs at the back of his collar, some unlabeled feeling so hot in his chest that it burned, making his shoulders curl forward to accommodate Jay further, making his chest widen on the next inhale, making him comb his eyes over Jay’s face for any sign of tension the tight grip at the back of his shirt suggested. 

But Jay remained red-faced and silent close to him, and Mike answered with both his thumbs stroking soothing circles into his hips in comfort and encouragement. Jay shut his eyes with another one of those barely-there sounds. He pulled down ever so slightly on Mike’s neck, causing Mike to hunch down further, as Jay came forward and found a spot for his blazing face against Mike’s shoulder. 

He radiated an almost unnatural heat through the fabric of his shirt. He smelled similarly too, like warm laundry: heavy but fragrant. There was that feeling again in Mike’s stomach, that warm one that felt like electrical sparks in his blood.

Jay held onto him tighter and when he made an almost inaudible stutter of his breath, Mike wrapped his arms around Jay’s waist and held him close. 

_ When I said I wanted to be your dog, _

_ I wasn’t coming onto you, _

_ I just wanted to lick your face, _

_ Lick those raindrops from the rainy days. _

Mike wasn’t sure what was happening. He doubted Jay knew either. They’d never done this, never gotten this close, but it didn’t feel wrong. Quite the opposite. Mike wanted to continue doing this, wanted to hold Jay to him, couldn’t let him up when he fit so perfectly against his front. 

Mike was alerted at the feeling of Jay’s soft lips murmuring against the skin of where his shoulder met his neck. Mike shivered, one hand sliding and flattening over Jay’s lower back in what he assumed could be seen as a protective gesture as he hoped it would encourage him and assure him that everything was okay.

“I’m sorry,” Jay whispered. Mike’s thumb stroked over his lower back. 

“There’s nothing to apologize for, Jay.”

“I wasn’t there.” Jay tightened his fingers, pulled at the back of Mike’s shirt and pushed his face further against his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re okay,” Mike whispered. “Everything’s okay.”

Mike rubbed up and down his spine once, twice, tightened his arms around his narrow waist again to hold him securely. 

Something was becoming unearthed in him, some truth he hadn’t yet acknowledged but that had always been there. Mike could feel it now, a rearrangement of something in him, some kind of wind blowing the dust off of what had long been waiting. This feeling was like a gemstone burning brightly with the fire of intimate affection beneath a blanket of his negligence. It was warming his heart now as he held Jay and led them in a slow, soothing sway. But he still wasn’t entirely clued in, though he recognized a shift in his chest at the sight of Jay’s face, an ember in his belly when his fingertips skimmed the back of his neck.

He wanted to ask Jay if he too was becoming a victim of this gentle fever but he didn’t even have to ask once he saw the soft, delicious crimson shade of heat fallen high across Jay’s cheeks, the side of his neck, surely leading down to his chest. 

Tomato sauce burbled quietly behind them and the track may have been fading blissfully out but their arms remained locked around each other. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a Spotify playlist! Included, the songs that are mentioned in this fic.
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/user/vpnz6b5w1rst14avnjfi6kmcp/playlist/3i0aQYT6t9sPDI40C13ho7?si=FNW80F-PRAG8-TSBVLpuDg


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said this on tumblr, but this chapter was part of a larger chapter that I decided to break into two. Because of that, this chapter is more transitionary and reflective, but ultimately necessary in order to lead more smoothly into next chapter

Mike was convinced that if you gained access to someone’s playlist, you’d gain access to their entire soul.

His soul happened to be comprised of chaotic chords and deafening drumbeats, all of which reflected an unrest at the state of the world. These were more readily accepted than the softer parts of himself, the ones that liked meandering piano notes and whispered lyrics that were all the pieces of himself that felt too much and loved too hard.

He held those most beloved songs close to his heart out of necessity, having learned his lesson the hard way after too often being ridiculed and laughed at by bullies hiding behind the punk aesthetic. 

“Dude, turn this shit off!” they’d cackle with tobacco laughter, all the while Mike went sweaty under the arms and tried his best to hide his sudden humiliation. 

Laugh all they wanted but they didn’t know Elton John had been there after difficult days all throughout high school, that Madonna was what he sang in the shower when he thought no one could hear, that Simon and Garfunkel lulled him straight to sleep when he felt winded up enough to break something. 

So when he first met Jay, he was still wary. Movies were one thing to share but music was another. 

They had been at Jay’s apartment when he had put on some music, something surprisingly alternative but not offensive to the ears. Jay had been nervous at this new pastime between them outside of the comfort of film and had been babbling nervously question after question of, “Do you like this band? Have you heard this song? Do you want to listen to something else?” 

This was back when Jay still believed Mike to be some kind of musical genius with unparalleled knowledge or opinion about all things music. He had seen Mike perform twice at this point and he remembered when standing there halfway in his kitchen, how he had wondered how Jay had gotten that impression at all.

It’d take Jay a little while longer to realize Mike held no higher education in the subject of his passion, less concerned with the technical and more concerned about what sounded good, what felt good. They would be high on a sweet strain of sativa when Mike would explain that sometimes it felt like his heart was playing through his fingers, and he’d wake up from that dream sometime later with a new song in his hands that he hadn’t remembered ever fashioning.

“What do you listen to?” Jay had said that first time in the kitchen. “I mean. Other than punk? Or is that all?”

It was like he had wanted to know more about him. Not unusual when making a new friend, but there was something else there, a directness begging information so he could begin to decipher this puzzle. Mike would assure him as he left his apartment that night that he wasn’t complex, that Jay would only be disappointed if he thought of him as some unreachable mountain or riddle to solve.

“Sure,” Jay had said, and Mike remembered the upward pull of his lips looking dangerously sharp.

He should have ran. But he was only baited, a stupid fish with moss-green hair falling for the hook of his smile. The time they spent together was equally divided into music and film, and each song Mike provided Jay to pick over and inspect for meaning was like exposing another piece of himself. It was hard, sometimes, nerve-wracking, how Mike’s thumb would tremble over the name of a track he had been listening obsessively to before finally pressing it. He could barely make eye contact that day, and he had kept his phone in his hand, ready to change it at the first sign of disgust or mocking. But Jay didn’t judge, didn’t roll his eyes. He just listened and stared at Mike as lyrics about not knowing who you were or where you fit in rode atop slow plucking across a guitar.

Jay had been the one to propose they share a playlist.

It had felt like a big thing but also not like a big thing. It was like saying something out loud that both of them already expected or knew, suddenly making it official. Mike had agreed but only because he knew he could trust Jay because Jay had seen his soul and had accepted it.

The funny thing with Jay was that he tried so hard to veil his true feelings but they always permeated through his song choices. As soon as they shared the password to a single Spotify account, Jay’s hopes of his truest feelings remaining private were gone forever. 

It had been raining when Mike noticed that Jay had just added Cat Power’s, “Metal Heart” to their shared playlist. On his break, Mike had called Jay.

“What?”

“Hey,” Mike said. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean what’s going on?” He sounded short, but shaky. “I’m at work.”

“I know you’re at work. I mean… Is everything okay?” This time the question was posed with a certain softness that delayed Jay’s retort. It took on another meaning, then, one much less direct but which the intention was clear. No one ever just added “Metal Heart” to their playlist on a day like this. Coincidence was not a possibility.

“It’s rainy.”

Mike went quiet, looked up at the sky where he had been leaning against the side of the restaurant he had just been laying rat traps inside of.

“It’s like, so dark. I slept in this morning ‘cause I had no idea what time it was and I still feel half-asleep, and just…” Mike could hear his swallow through the phone. “I always feel off on rainy days.”

“Hang in there,” Mike had said. “The day’s almost done.”

Jay laughed humorlessly. “I can’t tell.”

“Well I’m telling you,” Mike said, voice soft. “And I’ll be there when you get out. We can go back to mine and watch a movie.”

Mike had kept his promise and met him outside of The Dig as soon as Jay walked out of the glass door plastered with flyers of upcoming sales and shitty bands like Mike’s performing soon. It had started to rain at that point in a heavy mist that kissed their cheeks with cold affection and something like life glittered in Jay’s groggy gaze beneath the gray sky. And Mike heard in the soundtrack of his mind a soothing voice full of subdued conviction from that song earlier.

_ ‘I once was lost, but now, I’m found.’ _

It had always been like that for them. They had always been ‘that’ for each other. A refuge, Mike thought. Somewhere to go when the world was vicious and they felt like crumbling to pieces. Suddenly remembering a song that reflected as much, Mike added “Fallen From the Sky” to the playlist before resuming the song that Jay had added just last night after he had left Mike’s apartment.

Last night they had hung onto each other a little too long, though neither of them had mentioned it. After they peeled apart from each other, it had been like they were sleepwalking. They stood around in a dazed, uncertain of what to do next. Awkwardness had eluded them, but rather a confused fuzziness had Mike stuck somewhere between acting like the slow dance had never happened and taking Jay by his blazing cheek and guiding him back to his chest.

Jay fit there. Mike knew it now. He would never not know it.

Mike could almost feel Jay here against him as he unloaded boxes from a client’s storage unit and loaded it into the back of his pickup truck. Arms, around his neck needing him close; Jay had been holding onto him like he was afraid either he himself would drift away or Mike would. Then there was the blossoming heat of Jay’s cheek pressed firm against his shoulder, a hot plate heated by a fire from an indefinite origin. Lips, right here over his pulse, murmuring along to the soft pluck of the guitar and the crooning voice of a Mister Sufjan Stevens drifting in through the earbuds in Mike’s ears.

Jay had added songs by the artist before, quite notably one about morning and mourning on a day in March, when Jay had been feeling bittersweet and sort of heartbroken about life. But this one had come last night in the earliest hours of the morning, surely on his walk back home in Mike’s clothes and in his slippers, cold wind cooling his heated skin and chapping his soft lips. 

The boxes echoed in loud bangs as Mike threw them one after another into the truck bed but the gentle story of wasps and fear and kisses won out over any other sound surrounding him.

Mike was adept in deciphering meaning from Jay’s musical preference now but this one was stumping him. Because it was too much, brimming with warm emotion and Jay had yet to text him today or call him, and the words here suggested a close but ambiguous relationship and it was too real and--

And here was the dreaded next part. 

Hello, melting organs. Hello, accompanying shame.

Because Mike was a warm-blooded male and the wind could blow just right and he would get a hard-on. So reminiscing about incredible closeness, both emotional and physical, left him with tighter jeans suddenly, and he was forced to hide the bulge in his pants with a cardboard box labeled, “Mom’s Things.”

Maybe he should listen to something else. That way he wouldn’t overthink things, wouldn’t look too deeply into shit that was normal. But normal was not the way they did things; Jay had said so. When was the last time Mike had slow-danced with Rich? Jack? Colin? Jim? Laura, for fucks sake? Even his ex-girlfriends, boyfriends? 

Never.

Mike didn’t want to think about the dreams he had been having either. Those wet ones mostly hazy but hot as sin, hotter than his face when he woke.

It was like something was unleashed in him suddenly, something he could feel but didn’t know the name of. Somewhat familiar, yes, but unadulterated with the apathy and disinterest that had accompanied it previously whenever he had felt it toward a select few before. This time it was intense and constant, a kind of ticklish fizziness in his gut and an emotional warmth trapped behind his ribcage.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Jay.

_ I’m finishing early. Wanna come back to mine? _

Mike swallowed, wiped his clammy hand down the side of his black jeans.

_ sounds good _

Mike was so lost in thought that he ultimately succumbed to autopilot and found himself at Jay’s apartment like a dog following the scent of its master across state lines. Rumbling thunder woke him from his trance just in time for him to unlock the front door.

“Hey,” Jay greeted, tone unaffected by the storm. He always felt off on rainy days, and the rain was soon to come.

Mike shed his shoes and his jacket, scratched his scalp which gained a narrowed gaze from Jay in silent question.

“I don’t have lice,” Mike said, exasperated as he crossed the room to where Jay sat at the circular breakfast table. As he neared, he noticed Jay was in lounge clothes, again, and while his shirt was different, his baggy plaid pants were still Mike’s.

Mike’s stomach did a weird rollie-thingy that had his breath go short.

Jay didn’t answer, his face still suggesting a wariness to the claim. Mike sighed but smiled as he placed one hand on the table, the other on the back of Jay’s chair and bent down so Jay was faced with the green crown of his head. Like a monkey, Jay picked through his hair cautiously, fingertips chilly against his scalp. And then his fingers were threading through his hair with a sureness that made Mike think maybe this was his plan all along just to get his hands in Mike’s hair again.

Goosebumps trailed down Mike’s arms, the back of his neck tingling. 

“I guess you’re clean,” Jay said, pulling a handful of Mike’s hair gently before letting him go.

“So what’s up?” Mike asked when he was standing upright again. He didn’t mention the song Jay had added, didn’t ask him what that meant in the context of what had happened between them. Instead he played it off, acted like this was like any other time they had hung out.

“Nothing,” Jay said. “Up for a movie?”

They watched a time-travel movie but Mike didn’t really pay attention. Neither of them had yet mentioned last night out loud but their new proximity side by side on the couch suggested an unsaid acknowledgment. Jay had started at least three inches away from him but somewhere along the way, he had slid bit by bit toward Mike until their arms were pressed together. Jay was warm, not as warm as he had been in the kitchen, but still, he was comfortable and soft and lax against Mike.

Rain had started falling in a soothing sound that made the scene even more comfy and Mike didn’t even notice when the movie ended. 

It must have been good though, because Jay was struck with sudden inspiration. He sat at the breakfast table again, this time with his screenplay notebook open in front of him. Mike left him alone and made dinner for the both of them. Remembering his promise to not read it until it was finished, Mike averted his eyes in the direction of the ceiling as he set down the plate with the grilled cheese on it and the steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup.

“Thanks,” Jay said.

They ate in comfortable silence, Jay taking momentary breaks to scribble once more in his notebook.

“You’re using the pen I got you,” Mike observed around a mouthful of sandwich. Jay hummed, glancing at him briefly before returning back to his work. His expression was neutral but there was a growing shade of pink across Jay’s cheeks, not as vibrant as it had been yesterday but obviously there.

Mike smiled, felt his stomach roll over again. Then he frowned.

God, this was bad. How long, he wondered, before this all passed? Stupid libido, stupid fucking hormones. Stupid loneliness and boredom and greediness and all the rest of it.

Best to ride it out and wait for life to return to normal. Yes, Mike would ride it out, tonight, beneath the covers and into his hand. 

“So,” Jay said, clearing his voice but not looking up just yet. “What’s up with you?”

A little stiff, a little awkward, but Mike reckoned they were agreeing to play dumb.

“Nothing. Been working on some music? I have this song I wrote a couple of days ago, but I don’t know the words yet.”

“You’ll find them.”

“I guess. How long will I have to wait around until they show up, you think?”

“Depends.”

“Depends,” Mike murmured, itched his jaw.

“Play it for me now.” Jay was looking at him. “Do you have it on your phone?”

“ _ Ahh… _ No thank you.”

“What?” Jay smirked. “It’s that bad?”

It wasn’t that. Mike was actually pretty proud of how it sounded. It was mostly acoustic, but he had run the recording through his computer and added some quiet hi-hats and meandering single-note synth that ushered the instrumental song into something more experimental but not any less warm. He had written it that night, after Jay had left his arms and his apartment. 

He had yet to listen to it again but feared Jay’s reaction, feared Jay would be able to decipher in those yearning notes what Mike refused to admit. 

“Is it sad?” Jay asked, looking down at his screenplay, pen poised like he was at all focused on his writing.

“No,” Mike said and Jay’s shoulders seemed to loosen up.

“I need your opinion about this one part. In my screenplay,” Jay said.

Mike raised his eyebrows but didn’t dare glance down at the words on the page. “I feel like this is a test,” he said warily. “Is this a test?”

“Just some quick advice. C’mon.”

And did there exist any other alternative than Mike’s vehement agreement?

“Close your eyes,” Jay ordered, so Mike did.

“Okay,” Jay said and Mike reopened them.

The notebook was angled toward him on the table but it was mostly hidden beneath a complicated barrier Jay had erected with his hands and arms snaked all around the page. Revealed, however, in the tiny box made by his fingers was a single word.

Mike smirked.  _ Smartass.  _

“The-” Mike said, pronouncing it as ‘Thuuuh’ and lilted it upward at the end, a tone that was inconclusive and smile-inducing.

Mike even liked Jay’s handwriting. It was messy and like chicken scratch, nothing about it being immediately aesthetically pleasing but maybe he liked it  _ because _ it was Jay’s. 

“Looks very promising,” Mike said. “Literally anything could happen.”

“You think it’s strong?”

“Yup.”

“I think so too.”

“Dumbass,” Mike murmured and laughed when Jay swatted his shoulder.

The rain was still falling. The day was catching up with him. Mike slid down with his chin on the table and just watched Jay write. 

Much of life was music, Mike had realized. The ounds of life were melodic if you really listened. 

Jay was music, too.

The scribble of his pen across the paper and the tap of his toe on the floor. The cold encroaching across Milwaukee was getting to the both of them but where Mike coughed raggedly out of his abused lungs, Jay sniffled. Jay swallowed too, randomly and with a little click and occasionally a short,  _ ‘Mm.’ _

Mike had seen pictures of Jay as a kid, had seen it for himself in that experimental film Jay had made years back, how Jay’s teeth had once been unruly and protruding past his lips. Sometimes it was like Jay forgot he had invested some real money to tame them and would curl or bite his lip in a strange way or dip his chin when he was laughing or cover his mouth and Mike just wanted to take his hand and pull it away from his mouth, say, ‘ _ No, it’s okay, please let me see.’ _

“What're you doing?” 

“Nothing,” Mike murmured, feeling caught at some capacity. 

“Just staring?”

“Mm…”

“Okay, weirdo.”

Mike itched his nose. “So are you.”

“What?”

“A weirdo. You said.”

That was the first acknowledgment of last night. Both of them caught it. But it did not explode or get laughed at. A relaxing calm fell over them, a privacy once more that made it okay to dwell in whatever had happened and not run away from it. When Mike looked at Jay, Jay looked back with an intimate understanding.

”Are you bored?” Jay asked sincerely. “Do you need something to do?”

“I’m not a fucking kid you have to entertain.”

“No, but you get antsy when you’re bored and you start to do destructive shit.”

“Says who?”

“So you didn’t try to do a backflip off the couch when the electricity went out in your building?”

“Hey!“

Jay was smiling widely now, a rare playfulness reflected in his eyes. “Didn’t you sprain your ankle? Had to put ice on it and everything. And you called me all pitiful.  _ ‘Jay, Jay, I hurt myself really bad-‘“ _

Mike gasped. “You little shit!”

Jay snickered, capped his pen and set it aside. He closed his notebook and copied Mike’s posture down. They were a few inches away, cheeks resting atop their flat hands on the smooth tabletop. And they just stared, like they had never seen each other before, like they wanted to commit the other to memory.

“It’s still raining,” Mike murmured. “Can you hear it?”

Jay nodded, fingers twitching against the table.

The world was music; the rain against the windows and the hush of the AC and Jay’s breath. It all swelled within Mike and then a cold finger tapped his. 

“Are you falling asleep?”

Mike drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes, hadn’t even noticed them falling shut. “I had to move boxes today. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Jay hummed and that was like music too.

“Wanna lay down? In my bed?”

Jay’s hesitant tone reflected that he indeed know that he had never offered Mike as much. 

“I should clean the kitchen-“

“You barely made a mess,” Jay said. “And you made dinner, so it’s the least I can do. Go on; I’ll be there in a second.”

Each step Mike made down the hall toward Jay’s room had his heartbeat quickening. He was still unsure if he was being a creep and reading too much into every little thing but he had to consider the fact that Jay had never provided this intimate option of laying down together. That was reserved for floors and sofas when they were too drunk to settle for something better. 

Mike stood in Jay’s dark room, looked around.

It was clean, unlike Mike’s room. Posters were put up on the walls here too, and there were shelves of books and movies. 

Mike remembered when he first met Jay how he thought he was just a normal guy. How wrong he had been. Because Jay had showed him this weird fucking movie made by a cult and had showed him videos of muppets having sex and it was supposed to be funny but it was just weird? It was always the quiet ones that you had to watch out for, and while others would surely run away, Mike had fully accepted his potential fate as the new recruit to whatever doomsday suicide cult Jay was a part of or even becoming the non-virgin sacrifice to some demon overlord. 

It said a lot, Mike thought, but didn't want to think about what it specifically said. Because labelling it made it real and if it was real, it could end.

“You’re supposed to be in bed.”

Mike turned to where Jay walked in, only his toes visible beneath the too big pant legs. “O- Oh.”

“What’re you doing? Snooping?”

Mike turned back to the shelves in front of him. “Looking for evidence.”

“Evidence? Of what?”

“I’m beginning to have the sneaking suspicion that you’re a part of the occult.”

“What makes you say that?” Jay’s smile was evident.

Mike trailed his fingers down the spines of Stephen King and Russian novels on the shelf, down to the hefty Blu-ray collection.

Mike smirked and gave an  _ ‘ah-hah,’  _ as he raised up Jay’s Blu-ray copy of  _ Salò. _

“Exhibit A.”

“Th- That’s art!”

“Mmhm. That’s what they all say.”

Jay took the film from him and slid it back into its place on the shelf. “I thought you said you were tired.”

“Trying to get me into your bed?”

Jay huffed, rolled his eyes, and even in the shade of the room colored by the dark of the rain, Mike could see the crimson returning to Jay’s cheeks and the tips of his ears. Mike could hear his own heartbeat in his ears, could feel it throbbing in his fingertips. When Jay’s eyes finally flickered up to his, Jay made a sound like the ones last night and he swooned forward and sunk his teeth into Mike’s bicep like that was the only logical reaction. 

Warmth spiked in Mike’s blood, a fire creeping down Mike’s arms and he was making his own sound in his throat, deep and rumbling, and it made Jay’s teeth on him loosen, made Jay’s eyelids flutter. 

“See?” Mike smirked. “You do have a taste for blood. Heathen.”

Jay released him but didn’t break eye contact. “You’re completely right,” he said. “This is all a ruse. I’m just waiting until you fall asleep so I can sacrifice you to Satan. I have a chainsaw in my closet, actually.”

Mike yawned. “Well just wait till I’m way asleep to start it up, all right?”

They lay beside each other on Jay’s bed. They stayed above the comforter, maybe didn’t trust themselves underneath it. They hadn’t outright stated this change between them but they didn’t have to, not when they could feel it like increased gravity or magnetism between them. 

The weight of the tension might give them a fucking nosebleed and the whisper of the rain outside was interrupted by the  _ click, click, click _ of Jay biting his thumbnail.

Mike lifted a clumsy, yet tender, hand and hooked a warm finger around Jay’s wrist. The touch sparked that familiar feeling within Mike again, the same he had felt when Jay had been plastered against his front. Mike tugged Jay’s hand away from his mouth and Jay released it from his teeth when he understood what it was Mike was doing. Jay let his hand fall to the comforter in the space between them and both their hands were close on the bed, and was this what they were waiting for? Did they even know what they wanted? 

Something had changed. It might never go back to normal.

One question was on his mind but Mike didn’t know if he should ask it:  _ “Should we talk about it?” _

But the air felt too fragile right now, the silence too unstable to carry the weight of in-depth conversation about what they were feeling for each other suddenly in the aftermath of getting too close for too long last night.

So if Mike could ask that question, he wanted to ponder another. He wanted to ask Jay where Duncan was. He was all the talk and then he was gone, dropped like a bad habit. Mike kind of didn’t want to know, didn’t want Jay to say something terrible like, _ “I feel like I have to hang out with you right now to make up for me not being there for you last week. If it weren’t for the whole audition thing, I would be hanging out with Duncan right now.” _

“I want you to show me more movies.”

Jay turned to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“Whatever artsy movies you like.” Mike glanced over at him. “Fellini, right? That’s one? A director, I think?”

“Don’t do that.”

Mike’s stomach sank. “What?”

Jay returned his face in the direction of the ceiling. “Don’t do something on my behalf.”

“You do that exact thing for me all the time. I want to do it for you.”

“I want to be at your shows, Mike. Why can’t you understand that?”

“I do understand that. I always have,” Mike said, sounding too sincere. “I’ve never thought anything different, Jay. And I appreciate it so much. Do you understand that? How much I do?”

“You sound drunk.”

Mike felt insulted. “It’s called honesty,” he said, more firmly than he had intended. “I want you to show me what you like. Like, all those horror movies and short films and stuff.”

“You’d hate my artsy movies.”

“That’s okay.”

Jay looked over at him again. He searched Mike’s face for a moment and then said, “This isn’t because of Duncan, right?”

Mike groaned. He turned his head away from Jay momentarily before returning it back to the ceiling.

“Are we really talking about this?”

“So it is, Mike. Duncan bothers you.”

Mike’s jaw tightened. He huffed, rolled his eyes. Something else was welling up inside of him, a fear or an anger, maybe both. Whatever it was made him feel vulnerable and cornered and Mike wanted the silence to come back, wanted the deep introspection to return, didn’t know what had happened to that or how they had gotten here.

Jay propped himself up on his elbow. He looked down at Mike like he had looked at him when Mike had first played him his private playlist, like he was working out a complex puzzle. 

“You hate him,” Jay said, “don’t you?”

“And so what!?”

Silence fell over them. It was blaring. Jay was looking at Mike like this was some revelation, but maybe it was more so that Jay didn’t know the extent of it. It might have been misdirected but Mike was so backed up with his most recent, and confusing, feelings that he took the opportunity to relieve the pressure by opening the dam of things he had been keeping to himself and out poured true shit he didn’t even realize he was saying before he said it.

“My opinion doesn’t matter,” Mike said as he propped himself up on an elbow too. His heart was racing, his breath was quick. It was adrenaline and unedited sincerity and he showed his hand for once. “And I’m not being pitiful or whatever. I’m being real when I say what I think of him is irrelevant.” Mike was starting to get more animated the more worked up he got and he was emphasizing certain words and talking with his hands. And to anyone else it might sound like a disagreement but to them, it was clear desperation, a sad, anxious sort of wavering volume that threatened to break. “It’s irrelevant because you like him. And he likes you. He makes you happy, Jay, and  _ that’s enough _ . Whoever or whatever makes you happy is what matters and my opinion has nothing to do with that-“

“Mike-“

“Dont, just listen-“

_ “Mike.”  _ Jay’s voice was firm. Mike fought his first instinct, which was to cower but he fell to his second, which was to shut the fuck up. “Stop.”

Mike closed his mouth and lay back down. Jay followed him a few seconds later. Mike was on his back but Jay was on his side looking intently at him.

“‘Happy,’” Jay murmured. He scoffed. Mike flinched, eyes shutting. “More than one thing makes me happy, Mike.”

Mike didn’t open his eyes. He wasn’t ready to look at Jay’s face yet, wasn’t ready to face the embarrassment that awaited him.

“You make me happy,” Jay whispered like a secret just for them. A finger brushed Mike’s own on the comforter, barely there and indiscernible from accidental. 

Mike slid his eyes open. He looked over and it was him this time with the fever blistering across his face when he met Jay’s gaze.

Without a word, Mike rolled over and hid his face against Jay’s shoulder, saying  _ fuck it  _ as he returned to Jay’s warmth and his smell, and it was like they were being reunited despite being with each other all evening. He waited, tensely, but when Mike finally felt the weight of a head resting atop his and slender fingers stroking combing through the back of his hair, down his neck, back up, Mike thought that Jay felt like a refuge from more the rain. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait!

The show must go on, or something like that.

Josh hadn’t announced his verdict for who would be performing in Battle of the Bands yet, but there were bills to pay and weed to buy, so Best of the Worst booked a gig at a dinky little bar on the east side of town.

It was a small and shabby hole in the wall where the walls were crumbling and the liquor tasted like turpentine, but every note pouring through the speakers rattled the walls with an intoxicating power reverberating through the air. 

It felt good to be back onstage, not in front of one person but a faceless crowd often feeling singular in its composition. The anxiety was gone and now Mike felt nothing but a magical freedom as he bounced up and down on stage, simultaneously fevered and freezing as patrons came in from the snow and others went out for a smoke.

Jay was here, had come straight from work. He was wearing darker attire, presumably in an attempt to fit in aesthetically with the punk crowd. Still, he was set so apart in Mike’s eyes. The crowd might have been a gooey mess of shadow but there was Jay near its center, easily spotted by the lead singer. 

A long day’s work and October’s brisk cold had brought a sober tinge of exhaustion to Jay’s face but soon he was smiling as the band fell into a song only familiar to him: Mike Teavee’s character song from the Tim Burton directed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

They had recently watched the movie on cable while stoned out of their minds, leaning against each other shamelessly on Mike’s couch. 

“You’re so much like Mike Teavee,” had been Mike’s repeated line again and again and again, mind stuck on how this snippy, short, smartass brat who watched much too much television resembled Jay’s own temperament. “You could play him if they ever do another remake.”

“Oh yeah?” Jay spat, very Teavee-esque. “And who the fuck are you, huh?”

“Charlie.”

“Yeah right.”

“So you agree. I am right.” Mike scrubbed his nose with a finger, his confident nonchalance absolutely infuriating the foggy-eyed man beside him. 

Jay had then plastered his hand over Mike’s arrogant mouth and Mike had threaded his tongue in between Jay’s fingers and the warmth and the salt had sparked something within him, especially when Jay didn’t take his hand immediately away from him.

This version of the song dealt the crowd a heavy hand of electric guitar delivered easily by the short Canadian mischievously smiling down at his fingers racing across the strings. The drums were relentless and the bass rattled everyone in the room’s bones as Mike sang smugly that, “ _ The most important thing that we’ve ever learned (as far as children are concerned) is never ever let them near the television set.” _

Jay just shook his head and mouthed,  _ “Fuck you,” _ but Mike could see he was smiling. 

Mike winked at Jay and it felt like they were the only two in the room.

“How is everyone fucking doing?” Mike asked as the last note droned out. The crowd responded with an enthusiastic, and drunken, cry of positivity.

Not everyone was feeling the same way, however. That much became apparent on the first verse of the next song, this one about a ghost lamenting to fast guitar and an even faster drumbeat how the afterlife sucked considering now he could no longer taste beer, choke on smoke, cry.

Mike might have not been able to see them individually all that well, but he could gauge the movement of the crowd. The previous rhythm of their dancing had been disrupted by something, and Mike squinted his eyes at the center of that shadowy churning.

There was always something happening in a punk show’s crowd. Once, Mike had broken a tooth when someone accidentally elbowed him in the jaw while thrashing next to him. Upon telling his parents and presenting them with the slender shard of enamel, they would say that’s what he got for hanging around ‘criminals.’ Thankfully one of Mike’s friends’ mom was a dentist and had hooked him up with a metal cap for free. 

Major shout-out, Mrs. Monaghan.

But Mike had attended and performed in enough shows to skillfully gauge the energy of any given audience. And like a rumbling miles below the Earth’s surface or like clouds congregating on the horizon, Mike could feel something happening here.

There was a man right there, at the center of this brewing storm. He offset the movement of the crowd with his own disoriented stumbling and clumsy jostling. His scowl was hideous and his mouth was constantly moving. Mike did not falter in his singing but kept an eye on him as he got too close to some, yelled in the face of others. A physical altercation was born just as soon as it died in a shove this antagonist exacted upon a mohawked individual, who promptly shoved him back too far away for the fight to continue.

Unluckily, he was pushed in Jay’s vicinity. He picked him out of the crowd as if he knew this wasn’t exactly Jay’s scene and said something to Jay. Jay glared, said something back. When the man took a step forward, Jay took a step back, turned to ignore him but the man was still standing too close and staring.

Mike moved over to the side of the stage at the end of the song and informed one of the crew members of the fucking creep harassing the short guy in the black hoodie. They nodded but the entire next song, said creep was still creeping. He jostled those nearest him and shoved them, too intoxicated to even notice when someone threw their beer on his front. 

They finished the song and Mike took the opportunity of moderate silence to address the situation himself.

“Hey, fucker.” The audience turned to follow Mike’s pointed finger. The rest of The Best of the Worst squinted out ahead of them to see who Mike was referring to. “Yeah, I see you, asshole. Knock it off or get the fuck out.”

The creep said something in his assumed defense but it was lost in the rabble of the crowd and the long, single-note wail of Colin’s guitar. Then he was scowling and snapping at someone over Jay’s shoulder, leaving Jay in the crossfire and having to deal with an increasingly aggressive man getting closer to his face. 

“Hey! Leave him alone,” Mike pointed at Jay, “and leave everyone else alone, because we’re fuckin’ sick of it, all right?” 

The audience clapped and whooped in agreement. Rich started banging on the drums again.

Jim nodded to Mike as Mike turned, a silent question of,  _ ‘Everything good?’  _ Mike nodded back in hesitant agreement and they started up the next song. 

Naively he thought the situation would get better but the creep was in a certified fight now, involving fists and poorly-executed karate kicks. When someone shoved him from behind, the creep misplaced his rage and shoved hard at Jay, once, twice, so hard that Jay was stumbling backwards into some disgruntled audience members who snapped back in bellowing shouts challenging the deafening volume of the music.

Now Jay was being targeted on both sides, trying to explain himself but not being heard as the creep once again put his hands on him.

Mike wasn’t one to fight back. He never had been. Violence wasn’t his thing, but this time, that personal philosophy went out the window. Jay appeared startled and embarrassed and increasingly frightened as the guy continued to lash out and yell at him and everyone in his vicinity. Mike’s racing heart and that lizard part of his cortex convinced him nothing actually mattered right now other than making sure Jay was safe. Sadly, ensuring so wouldn't be too easy this time around. 

Mike stopped singing. The music went on all around him, deafening and hard.

“Move, move,” he said into the mic before dropping it on the stage. He waved the crowd to part like his name was Moses and they parted as much as the small room would allow.

He took a few steps back, then ran forward full speed to the edge of the stage. Mike launched himself into the crowd feet first and his boots collided with the creep’s chest, sending the both of them to the floor. 

The crowd erupted into cheers. 

Mike brought himself up from the forest of ripped jeans and leather boots. Other than a slightly sore ass, he was all right. The same couldn’t be said of the creep who was still on the floor, groaning and spitting terrible curses.

Jay looked on, shocked and confused, not entirely sure of what just happened. Mike could see his chest moving quickly through his black shirt as he recovered from the suddenness of the situation.

“You okay?” Mike said. Jay went to nod but then was cut off when a fist collided with the outer orbit of Mike’s eye socket. 

The crowd released a synchronized,  _ “Ooh!” _

Everything went fuzzy for a moment. Somewhere in the distance, Colin’s guitar wailed as if it were a mountain lion screaming in defense of him. The creep had risen from the ground and was intent on hitting Mike again but it was Jay this time pushing the man and sending him once again to stumble drunkenly to the floor. The note from Colin’s guitar pittered out as the bar’s security swept up the troublemaker and threw him out into the snow. 

The crowd was abuzz with the excitement of justice served. Mike regained his balance for the most part and went to wipe off the warm trickle of sweat at the side of his head, only to find that it was blood when it smeared sticky across his forearm and cheek.

“ _ Mike. _ ”

Jay stared wide-eyed at Mike’s brow where the man had struck. His fingers twitched where he lifted his hand, as if he wanted to touch the wound but knew better. 

“It’s okay, I’m good Jay,” Mike assured. “Are you okay?”

“Me?” Jay scoffed. “You’re the one bleeding, Mike. You’re fucking bleeding. Fucking Christ.” 

Mike could still feel the warm drip down the side of his face, but he attributed the adrenaline currently pumping through his veins to his lack of pain. Mike removed his shirt to wipe at his face and arm and then threw the dirty article of clothing aside. 

“I’m fine. I promise.” Upon hearing this, those nearest to them cheered again, rejoicing at their fun and their music not ending because of one asshole who could only manage one good punch.

Those drunken audience members he passed on the way back to the stage assured him that that was the “most fucking punk thing” they’d ever seen. A couple even took a picture with him, shirtless and dripping blood from the corner of his brow, down the side of his face, off his jaw and onto his chest. Mike had been a good sport about it and actually gave a smile with his eyebrows raised despite the slight sting of his skin.

Jay hadn't been so amused. He had looked genuinely concerned as Mike continued the show. He hadn’t joined the crowd in cheering when Mike said something about not being an asshole and harassing people who just wanted to have a good time. Jay found his way out of the crowd and to the back where the bar was so he could get a beer, or maybe it was something stronger. Mike noticed this, and feeling bad about it, cut the show four songs early. The band didn’t make a big deal of it; they too were uncertain of the state of Mike’s excessive bleeding and the increasing mess of his chest.

Mike didn’t have much of a choice but was redirected into a bathroom down a shady hallway marked, ‘ _ Staff Only.’  _ There was nervous rabble all around him from his own band, the crew and the bar’s staff, but no one was listening as Mike proclaimed that he was fine, like, really. 

“Are you sure, dude?” the staff member standing in the doorway asked. He was holding a walkie-talkie spitting static up to his face which he had previously been using to ask for guidance from an unseen power. “That’s a lot of blood.”

“He must have nicked me with his knuckle or something, but I’m golden.”

“Are you sure? You don’t need an ambulance or something?”

“I’m not even hurting.”

“All right, if you say so…  _ Agh! _ ”

The poor staff member standing in the doorway was shoved roughly aside as Jay barrelled into the room.

“What the  _ fuck _ , Mike?”

“Shit…” Mike murmured, at least another foot taller than Jay but shrinking to nearly his height.

The blood on him looked black in the bathroom’s blue light casting the room in a kind of mouthwash-y hue, much more intimidating.

“Jay, I’m fine--” Mike tried but Jay was his own storm as he crossed the room. Colin smartly put up his hands in surrender and stepped to the side, taking hold of the sweaty front of Jim’s shirt and pulling him out of the crossfire of Jay’s explosive worry and out of the room.

Jay took Mike by the slick biceps and pushed him to sit on the toilet seat. Mike did so with a groan and leaned back on the graffitied wall behind him

“You actual idiot, you fucking--  _ ughh _ , look at your chest!”

Mike looked down as if he didn’t know. “Yeah--”

“Shh, shut up.” Jay took Mike’s face in his cold hands, turned it this way and that in such a rough way that it had Mike smiling. “Jesus, I think you need stitches. What? Why are you smiling? You think this is funny, you dick?”

“ _ Hah _ , no! No it’s not funny, Jay. Sorry.”

“You’re so fucking obnoxious, I swear—“

“What’s goin’ on in here?”

The bar’s owner, a rotund and long-bearded man with tattooed hands, came into the already crowded room upon hearing the commotion.

“Nothing, man,” Mike said, but Jay was putting his hand once again over his mouth 

“We need a towel or something. Quick,” Jay said. “He’s hurt.”

A rag was fetched for him and wetted in the bathroom sink. Jay snatched it from the scrawny crew member nearly trembling in fear of Jay. He mopped up the blood like ink staining Mike’s bare chest and the side of his face and hissed at Mike when he tried taking the rag from him to clean himself. Mike, feeling content and not very worried as he knew he’d be fine, rested his hands in his lap and let Jay fret over him if it made him feel better.

“It’s not bad at all, lookit that,” the bar owner, who was still lurking close by, said. He was right; now that most of the blood had been wiped away, the wound was actually smaller than originally thought and seemed much more manageable.

“It’s still deep, though,” Jay said. “That asshole must have been wearing a ring or something. I don’t fucking know.”

“Shh, hey,” Mike soothed upon seeing the flareup of anger simmer down, panic now evident in the shifting of Jay’s eyes. He lifted a hand to rest on Jay’s waist and Jay shifted his feet and leaned into it, though he huffed and said, “Don’t.”

The bar owner was unmoved by Jay’s frantic and sharp energy, as he informed them this was nothing too bad; he’d seen worse. Stitches? Not necessary. The next best thing for him, and a cheaper alternative, the shady bar owner assured, was super glue.

“My mom used to do it for us all the time as kids. It works fine.” He looked over at the kid still standing in the door. “What the fuck you standing around for? Go get the glue from the toolbox!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jay spat. “Glue? Actual fucking glue? No--”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine! You’ll hurt him,” and as Jay said this, his fingers were clawed into Mike’s bare shoulders, shaking slightly as he considered the thought. Mike squeezed Jay’s waist.

“Jay. Jay, look at me.” Jay reluctantly broke his gaze from the bar owner and looked down at Mike, his eyes softer, if a bit conflicted. Mike was starting to bruise and it looked worse under the blue bulbs of the bathroom. “It’ll be fine. I don’t have money for the hospital anyway.”

“The money? Mike, we’ll find the money.”

“The glue will be fine,” the bar owner said.

“The glue will be fine,” Mike echoed. Mike was rubbing his thumb soothingly over Jay’s hip bone and Jay relented, dropping his head and digging his nails into Mike’s forearm leading to the hand holding his waist.

The glue did work, for the most part. It was a little wet and oozy at first as the bar owner applied it but it dried after a couple of minutes. The entire time, Jay was looking on obviously worried. Mike could see him thinking and tried to ease him but to no avail.

“It doesn’t hurt. I’ll be fine—”

“You’re pissing me off.”

“I’m sorry, Jay. As soon as this is done, I’ll walk you home.”

“ _ No. _ I want to just, go by myself.”

“What’s wrong? Everything’s okay, Jay.”

But Jay didn’t say anything more. Once Rich had returned into the bathroom to inquire about his friend’s state, Jay roughly handed the wet, bloody rag off to him, and left out the door, saying shakily that he’d see Mike later.

It was no use trying to get him to stay, or to convince him that Mike was actually fine beneath all the blood and the nasty bruise on the side of his right eye. Once Jay set his mind to something, that was it. So Mike let him go and waited until he was home and in bed to text him that all was well and that he was sorry.

Jay didn’t answer. Mike let it be, knowing Jay might need some time to cool off.

The adrenaline wore off and the next couple of days were accompanied with a tender soreness of the right side of Mike’s face. Work kept him busy and his mind off of it, and by Wednesday, the pain was only a vague annoyance. He still hadn’t heard from Jay at length, only receiving short texts that failed to address what had happened. Mike felt frustrated, wanted some way to make Jay understand that it was fine and that it was nothing more significant than what someone might get after falling off a bicycle.

But there was no use. Jay worried about Mike like Mike worried about Jay. It was like telling a dog to not sniff another dog’s ass or telling a bird to not migrate; it was natural and there was absolutely no way it could be written off.

Mike would have to let him ride it out for the next day or two, but that night at nine pm, after a long day breaking down walls at a local store undergoing remodeling and renovation, Mike found himself hoping it was Jay who was texting him when his phone buzzed.

He sighed. Colin. 

Mike opened the message up and was immediately unsettled to find a plea for help without the use of Colin’s signature gifs. Sensing the seriousness of the situation, Mike bolted up from where he had been dozing on the couch with his hand in his pants and sprinted down the road instead of waiting for the bus.

When he got to the apartment after racing up the apartment’s stairs, Colin was standing in the kitchen. He looked startled and small in his pajamas, a pair of baggy sweats and one of Jim’s t-shirts. 

“What?” Mike said, breathless. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

“The bathroom.”

“What?”

“In the bathroom.”

Mike glanced in the direction of the bathroom, then opened a drawer in the kitchen and grabbed the rolling pin he found inside. He carefully moved down the hall, took a deep breath and then kicked open the bathroom door, jumping inside with both hands wielding the cooking tool. 

There, on the edge of the bathtub, was a spider the size of a silver dollar, just chilling. 

“That’s it?” Mike said, hands falling to his sides and his heart still hammering in his chest.

“That’s him,” Colin said from where he peeked into the doorway. “ _ The intruder. _ ”

Mike set the rolling pin in the sink and took up a small paper cup from the stack by the toothbrushes. With some finesse, Mike managed to trap it inside with the help of his hand. 

Colin made a strangled sound and fled in the opposite direction when Mike exited the bathroom, no help as Mike struggled with the front door. Mike finally got it open and he threw the spider out with a silent wish that the arachnid would find another apartment to leach heat from. 

“What’re you Americans putting in the water? That thing was huge!”

Mike turned to find Colin re-emerged from the hall, now much more confident. 

“Can we have a safe word? Please? So I know if you’re really in trouble?” 

Colin blinked. “Really in trouble?”

“Actual emergencies. Illness. Arrests. Breaking both your legs, that sort of thing.”

“Spiders aren’t on the list then.”

“They are on the very bottom of the list,” Mike said. “Just let me know next time before I have a fucking heart attack.”

The boxes once crowding the living room were gone. The apartment looked more like an actual home now, with weird thrift store art that exuded a Dada-esque sort of humor hanging up in the kitchen beside pieces that looked reminiscent of Canada.

“You’re settling in well,” Mike said.

“It’s becoming home.”

Mike looked around in the empty darkness and it suddenly dawned on him. “Where’s Jim? Why couldn’t he deal with the spider?”

“He’s gone right now. Out for the night.”

“And you’re not with him?” It was as unnatural as peanut butter without jelly, or weed without junk food. 

“He’s out,” Colin said. “With a lady.”

“Oh.”

Colin shrugged like it didn’t really matter. He glided over to the kitchen on socked feet at least three sizes smaller than Mike’s. 

“Are you—” Mike started, then tried a different phrasing. “Does that bother you?”

“Bother me? Like how?”

“I don’t know. You’re always together. It’s weird seeing you apart.”

Colin smiled. “Are you asking if I’m jealous? Like she’s taken him away from me or something?”

Mike shrugged, felt kind of stupid when Colin put it that way.

“Let me ask you this— Do you get jealous?” Colin said. “When Rich is with Laura?”

“What? No!”

“Okay. Well, that’s how I feel about it,” Colin said. “There’s no reason to be jealous. I don’t feel like Jim does, about women, anyway. Or men. He knows I love him, and he loves me, and there’s nothing and no one that’ll change that. Y’know?”

Mike nodded, though he was sure it was a lot more complicated than Colin was making it out to be.

“He met her at school. He’s been busy,” Colin said. “With school, I mean. Jim really likes his class. Didn’t I tell him he would? He’s always struck me as an artist but he didn’t think so. Now I think he’s finally seeing what I always saw.”

Colin pulled a watercolor painting from its place on the fridge. He turned it toward Mike. It was a landscape piece on eggshell-white paper. Light blues bled into pale whites of the sky and the trees peppering the hills were lush and emerald. It didn’t look too bad for a first attempt. Mike said as much. 

“Right? I wish he was here to tell you about it.”

“Well you’re here,” Mike murmured thoughtfully. He looked at Colin. “You can tell me what you think about it.”

Colin smiled, his eyes still set on the watercolor painting in Mike’s hands. 

“I think it’s a lot like Canada. In summer, of course.” Colin touched the watercolor grass speckled with tiny drops of yellow and pink paint to signify flowers. “Do your summers look like this?”

Mike considered it, then said, “Well it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“Why’s that?”

“Because whatever my answer is about how similar summers are, it’ll never feel like yours.”

Colin smiled. “Yes,” he said, “I guess you’re right.”

Mike asked Colin rather kindly but nonchalantly if he wanted him to stick around given that the apartment seemed mighty dark and lonely, but Colin politely answered that he was on his way to bed right now anyway. 

“Stay until I fall asleep?” he asked as his only stipulation and Mike answered, “Of course.”

Mike went over to Rich’s place once Colin was snoring, as Rich’s apartment wasn’t too far away from here and how Mike had received a few texts from Rich anyway requesting his assistance. 

Begrudgingly, Mike could see a pattern emerging tonight, a pattern promising a few more hours of work before sleep took him.

Rich was sitting on the couch, eating some pizza rolls off a paper plate and watching  _ Mad Men _ when Mike arrived. Jack was down the hall, on the computer in his room. He was speaking to his friends on his bulky headset and when Mike stuck his head into the room, Jack looked over his shoulder and greeted him by name, the voices in his headphones chorusing, “Who’s Mike? Mike? Who are you talking to?”

“Where is it?” Mike asked Rich as he came back into the living room.

“Right over there.”

Mike made his way over to the amp Jim usually used but that Rich kept in his apartment for safe keeping. Mike didn’t know; Rich was kind of weird about his possessions. 

Mike turned it on and was met with a headache-inducing rattle. He unplugged it from the wall and searched for what tools he needed in Rich’s toolbox already positioned conveniently beside it.

Usually it wouldn’t be worth the trouble; they would usually just throw it out and get a new one from the pawn shop, or that’s what they used to do when they were younger. But they both had poured some money into this big one that produced a nicer, clearer sound. So Mike set to work.

“I thought you knew how to fix electronics?” Mike grumbled as he struggled to pull his fingers free from a tangle of wire.

“I fix computers, not speakers and instruments.” Rich muted the television. “That guy decked you pretty good, huh.”

“I’m fine,” Mike said. The first time he tells everyone he’s fine and he means it and no one believes him. Ha.

“Well, as your friend, I’m telling you it looks kind of fucked up.”

“Getting punched at my own show,” Mike said. “That has to count for something.”

“Very punk rock of you,” Rich said with a condescending laugh. Mike shot him a look.

“I saw Jay leave.”

Mike didn’t say anything.

“Do you know why?”   
“No,” Mike said. “Not really. I think he was just overwhelmed by everything. That guy was bugging him too before I went down there.”

“Before you launched yourself off of the stage.”

“I wasn’t really thinking about my entrance.”

“That’s pretty obvious.” Rich sighed. “Look, I’m not entirely sure why he left, but I’m just gonna take a shoot in the dark and say, you being a punching bag isn’t really Jay’s thing.”

Mike stopped working. He turned to look at Rich, brow furrowed.

“What?”

Rich shrugged. “That’s just the feeling I got. The way he was all worked up in the bathroom, that’s the impression he was giving me. And in the crowd too, immediately after that guy got kicked out. Looked less worried about what had happened and more about your bloody face.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t see the crowd from where you sat.”

Rich shrugged. “Sometimes I see more than you think.”

“What else can you see, huh,” Mike said, tightening a screw on the back panel.

“No comment.”

Mike shook his head. Fine. Be cryptic.

“Have you heard anything from Josh?” Mike plugged in the amp, turned it on. It hummed cleanly once more.

“No,” Rich said regretfully.

“It makes me worried when he goes radio silent.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Just like last year.”

“It won’t be just like last year.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Mike closed the toolbox. “I want this, Rich. You know that.”

“I know. We all do.”

“I know.”

“It’ll happen if it’s meant to happen.”

Mike’s eyes went wide. He pointed a  _ gotcha!  _ finger at him. “You sound just like Laura! She’s getting to you!”

Rich waved him off. “She is not-“

“Yes she is!”

“Naaah.”

Rich had been a staunch atheist all his life, no inclination toward belief in the afterlife or in spectors no matter how much Mike tried to convince him that there was definitely something spooky on another plane of existence.

In some of his songs, Mike had reflected on how it was a shame that organized religion sucked so much because that Jesus guy seemed rather cool. The dude defended prostitutes and hung out with the poor and told the rich to fuck off. 

This meditation had turned Mike happily agnostic, but Rich never was one to give in to ideas of any possibility of a deity or the supernatural, so to hear him say something so much like something Laura would say? It had Mike laughing obnoxiously. Rich flipped him off as he stood from the crowd to throw away his empty plate.

Rich got the ultimate last laugh, however, when he told Mike to take that toolbox over to Laura’s right now so she could fix the shower.

“Hey! But--”

“Bye, Mike. Thanks a ton.” And Rich was gone down the hall and to his bedroom.

Mike groaned in exhausted annoyance but took the tool box with him as he stood. 

Jack’s clown bag was sitting on the breakfast bar. Mike, the Nosey Nancy he was, peeked inside. He reached in and took the three striped balls in his hands, squeezing them and remembering how he had learned how he had learned how to juggle in fourth grade as part of his school’s theater program.

He tossed one up and then another, and it all came back to him, a part of his childhood, and he was juggling but there was no one to witness him doing so. 

Laura lived in a nicer apartment than Mike, Rich or Jay. It had an elevator and everything, though it was rickety and broken down half the time. Mike wondered if she and Rich would ever get married and if they would move far away from Milwaukee and into an actual house. They should, only deserved to establish a real life in the quiet suburbs where they’d have kids and find dull but well-paying jobs and they’d mow the lawn on the weekends and gossip about the neighbors. 

That was all anyone ever wanted.

Not Mike.

He didn’t know for sure what exactly he wanted, just knew he wanted to live. Just ‘existing’ wasn’t enough. He wanted the world to overwhelm him, wanted to feel the wind in his bones and the sun on every inch of his body and when he slept, he wanted to sleep hard. He wanted love to suffocate him. He wanted a relationship with rules like Bonnie and Clyde, wanted to redefine what being lovers meant, wanted someone to die for. 

Few understood, and Mike thought once he found someone who really did, he would marry them.

“Heyhihowareyou?” he grumbled when Laura opened the door.

“Water’s spraying everywhere  _ but _ out of the shower head.” She lifted the slender piece of metal in her hand. “And the handle broke off.”

Laura didn’t need him to do the work, not really. She just needed the tools but having him here was free labor under the guise of friendly obligation. So she set him to work. 

Mike pulled back the shower curtain and stepped into the shower, setting his small tool box between his boots. He held out his hand to her and Laura placed the handle in his awaiting palm. 

“Did you tell your landlord about this?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to deal with all that shit. It’ll take him weeks to fix it and I need to take a shower right now.”

“Hard day?”

Laura ran a hand through her dark-blonde hair. “Honestly.”

She worked as a shift manager at a local restaurant that served predominantly burgers and steak. Laura had moved up after a year and was frequently bombarded with calls that had her reworking the puzzle of shift times. 

Rather than relax on the couch or go off to her bedroom, she lingered in the doorway. She didn’t seemed to be surveying his handiwork, rather she was surveying Mike himself. She shifted back and forth on feet as she weighed whether or not to leave him. Staying won out and Laura leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms, smirking.

Mike glanced once, twice at her out of the corner of his eye. “What?”

She shrugged, smirk bordering on shit-eating grin. “You just got an energy about you.”

“‘An energy.’ Is that supposed to sound ominous?”

Laura pointed a finger at him. “Don’t think I’m as oblivious as my boyfriend. Or his roommate, apparently. Something in you’s changed. Do you feel it? Or are you just as oblivious as they are?”

Mike raised an eyebrow as he tightened another screw. “I don’t know what the hell you're talking about.”

“It’s the position of Venus right now--“

“Oh, come on--“

“You come on.”

Religious curiosity aside, Mike was stubborn in his belief that astrology was nonsense, never mind the observations Laura had made about him in the past based on his birth chart and zodiac sign.

“Listen here, moody Scorpio— I know you.”

“Oh yeah?” Mike had slurred once when they had gone out to drink, drunk as fuck. “How’s that?”

“The zodiac speaks for you.”

“Does it now?”

Laura had folded her arms on the table where they sat at the corner of the bar, stared him down with that chilly blue gaze. “You’re emotional. You feel so much. You have the need to be a ‘protector,’ but you’re still so sensitive. You’re charismatic. Brave. And sex? You don’t have sex; you make love. Foreplay is a must. Long sessions, no quick fucks. Primal. Eye contact always. You’re adventurous. Passionate. Negatively, you’re moody and slow to trust others, especially if you’ve been hurt in the past, which you have. You’re jealous and lustful. Obsessive, some would say. Overbearing. Intense-“

“Stop, stop,” he had said with a wave of his hands because it had felt like he was being attacked or exposed. 

Maybe it wasn’t all bullshit, but he’d never tell her that.

“You’re good to go.” Mike dried his hands on the towel she handed him and dropped the screwdriver back in the mess of a toolbox that Laura would be keeping until she needed Mike to haul it off elsewhere again.

“Thank you kindly.” 

Before he left, Laura gave Mike a brief hug. He was surprised by this out of character act but found comfort in the squeeze of her arms around him.

Whoever said distance made the heart grow fonder was fucking right. As Mike trekked all around town, all he could think about was how much he missed Jay, wanted to talk to him again, see him. He brought out his phone and stared at his contact name, battling with whether or not to press it.

Mike was never like that, how he had been during the show. He just couldn’t explain how the sight of Jay being harassed and in danger had immediately shoved him off of a mountain and into the deepest pit of needing to keep Jay safe at all costs. It was insane to consider but Mike had seriously felt prepared right then and there to tear the world in half, to fucking stop the ocean waves, to do anything Jay needed of him. 

Mike kind of just wanted to hear his voice again. Was that fucked up? That even if Jay was still mad at him, maybe mad at him for, like Rich had said, ‘being a punching bag,’ Mike just wanted to hear Jay tell him to fuck off in his own voice.

Mike licked his lips, lifted his thumb--

_ Brrring! _

Mike nearly dropped his phone as it vibrated in his grip. His reawakened juggling skills kept it from shattering on the sidewalk

Jay.

“Hello?” Mike said, and somewhere in the back of Mike’s mind, he acknowledged something like a cosmic coincidence of being just about to call Jay when Jay called him.

“ _ Hey.” _

“Hey,” Mike said like a relieved sigh, Jay’s voice replenishing the drying well reserved for him in Mike’s fucking soul. “What’s up?”

“ _ Nothing. Um… are you free tonight?” _

Mike’s muscles ached. His head hurt. He was so ready for bed, but he said, “Of course. Why?”

“ _ I need help bringing some boxes from my storage unit to my apartment.” _

But Jay might as well have proposed going bar hopping all night because Mike was game to be some physical labor as long as it was for Jay.

Mike had to hurry over to his apartment to grab the dolly from his closet. His bed called for him, as did the shower promising hot water to thaw his frigid bones, but Mike was already out the door and fast walking in the direction of Jay’s storage unit.

Jay met him outside the gate. Mike’s heartbeat quickened as soon as he laid eyes on him. His hair looked soft and his skin was this striking shade of yellow-orange from the light fastened on the gate. As soon as Jay saw him, his eyes went straight to the scabbed bruise on the edge of Mike’s eye. His tense expression shifted into something not easily identifiable but whatever he was feeling weighed heavy on his shoulders and tightened his jaw. 

Mike wasn’t too sure what to say. He wanted to apologize but he didn’t want to upset Jay further by bringing it up.

“Hey,” Mike said. 

“Hey,” Jay said and he entered the code for the gate. It popped open and Jay waited for Mike to step through before entering himself and walking down the small little road to an adjacent building. 

Jay had gotten the unit, no bigger than a closet, from one of his coworker’s brothers as compensation after he had filled in for her on numerous occasions. She had since quit but the storage unit was still his.

Jay unlocked the ribbed door and he didn’t even have to ask for Mike to lift it up.

Cardboard boxes were stacked upon each other, dusty and deteriorating. The boxes were taped up and as much, held their contents a secret, though it wasn’t impossible to guess what was in them.

October had arrived in a brisk wind haunting them like a ghost and dressed in the white shroud of snow. It would seem the ice was coming earlier and earlier every year but Mike welcomed it because he adored the way it made warmth essential. Jay welcomed it too, always had, as the spooky season of Halloween was finally upon them, despite the fact Jay lived this holiday year ‘round.

Jay didn’t have to label these boxes ‘HALLOWEEN,’ because what else would be in them?

Also in the storage unit, one of Mike’s old guitars that he completely forgot he had told Jay to hold onto for him. It was one of his first acoustic guitars, maybe that was why he kept it, but it was dusty and weathered where it was propped up against the side of the storage unit.

“Open that one up,” Jay instructed. He stood at the opening of the tiny closet of a storage unit, wearing a thick, black hoodie with an Eraserhead enamel pin fastened over his left breast.

Mike brought out a pocket knife from his waistband and flipped it open. He dragged the steel blade down the packing tape holding the indicated box closed and popped it open. 

Jay came inside, rummaged through its spooky contents before ordering the opening of the next one. It went like this until Jay had thoroughly reminded himself of his collection of Halloween memorabilia, and with each box, Mike tried another joke at the expense of some decoration inside that Jay defended with a heart-touching genuineness. 

Whatever that funk was once hanging around them following the show was gone now as they re-acquainted themselves with one another. It was a relief, and they both echoed that feeling of finally going back to how it was, never mind the bruise and scab still on Mike’s face.

It didn’t matter, not right now anyway. And that was more than fine.

“What’s in that one?” Jay said, pointing at a box at the very top of a metal shelf built into the wall

“I dunno. Why you asking me?”

“‘Why you asking me?’ Get to it, servant.”

Mike laughed at Jay’s doofy mimicry of him.

He reached up to the top shelf and brought down a dusty box feeling on the verge of disintegration in his hands. It must have been stored there for more than five years at least with the level of deterioration and grime.

Mike set it down and popped it open, wiped his hands on his jeans. 

“No fucking way.” Jay reached inside with both hands with the same care as if he were pulling a living baby from it. Carefully, Jay brought out a black brick of machinery from its confines. “This is the first camera I ever bought myself. Probably got it in, like, ninth grade? I totally forgot I even had it in here”

The white light attached to the outside of the unit like a driveway light painted this piece of Jay’s history like a dramatic photograph, black plastic in pale palms, fingers red with the cold. 

“Is this the one you’d shoot your films on?” Mike asked, feeling empathetically nostalgic for this little piece of dated technology.

“Yeah.” Jay turned it this way and that, pressed a button. A panel popped open on the side. 

“Empty,” Jay said, easily sounding thankful, never a fan of seeing his old self on film. Mike was less so happy as chubby, crooked-toothed Jay was a soft spot for him. 

Mike arranged the boxes on the dolly and grabbed his old guitar, using the strap to throw it over his shoulder. They probably looked like idiots walking down the street, wheeling ratty cardboard boxes busting visibly at the seams with fake spiderwebs and plastic skeleton parts, but neither of them really cared. 

Jay walked beside him, not really looking at where he was going as he was taken with the camera in his hands. Mike let him be, until Jay snapped the pop-out screen on the side shut and turned to him.

“Hey,” Mike said.

“Hey,” Jay said.

“So, what’s been up?”

Jay shrugged, looking a little guilty again. “Been busy with work, I guess. I kind of don’t want to talk about it.”   
“Then we won’t.”

Jay looked thankful. “What about you?”   
“Same, honestly.”

They could have said something about that night, about the unanswered text messages, but they didn’t. It felt too fresh at this moment, too uncertain. Getting hung up on shit like that was for other people, not them.

They were already on the same wavelength; there was no reason to revert back to whatever that was.

“Oh, hey,” Jay said. “The local arthouse theater is doing this Halloween night thing. Everyone who comes dressed up gets discounted drinks. Is that something you’d been interested in?”

“You had me at discounted drinks,” Mike said, though Jay really had him at ‘Oh.’

It was interesting that Jay was asking him and not, say, Duncan. This seemed like a prime Duncan activity but Mike kept that to himself, didn’t really care because Jay had chosen him, had invited  _ him _ . Mike preened internally, smug and wishing he could throw it in Duncan’s face.

He needed to get over Duncan. He was wasting too much time thinking about him. 

Colin’s words came back to him, then. He never did get jealous about his friends’ potential hookups, or their other shitty friends. Rich had a friend from childhood that was a real drag and Mike didn’t really care that he occupied Rich’s time whenever he was in town. Even Jack had once had a terrible girlfriend that insulted Mike blatantly and to his face and Mike hadn’t even blinked at her insults.

But this was different. Why was it so different? 

Was it because it was Jay?

“What are you planning on going as? For the costume contest thing,” Mike asked, not really wanting to think about it anymore.

“I was thinking we could go as a paired costume,” Jay said.

“What’re you thinking?”

“I’m not sure yet.” 

“Well we should do something film related, right?  _ The Wicker Man _ ,” Mike mused. “Me in a white robe, you in a horrendously patterned jacket.”

“So I’m the cult leader in that scenario.”

“I didn’t really think about it, but sure.”

“Fine then. The Shining,” Jay said, biting back playfully. “You in a dog suit and me in a tuxedo.”

“Kinky bitch!”

Mike carted up the boxes using the utility elevator at the far side of the building. Once inside Jay’s apartment, Jay was too distracted by the camera to help. Jay was the only one who could get away with this, as Mike would have ordered Rich or Jack or Colin, Jim, literally anyone else to do their fair share at a task like this. But Mike gave special privileges to Jay, always had, and was even content to do work while Jay situated himself at a chair at the breakfast table so he could insert a new SD card and batteries into the dusty video recorder.

“Okay, are you gonna turn on?” Jay murmured down at the camera in his hands as Mike finished placing the last box in the living room. Mike smiled as he sat in the chair next to him, finding it funny the way Jay sometimes spoke to inanimate objects. It was not uncommon for Jay to speak sternly to the rickety washing machines in the laundromat down the street, and used rather patient vocabulary with his coffee maker when it struggled to dribble coffee into his awaiting mug.

There was a strange electrical sound emitted from the dusty creases of the camera. The pop-out screen on the side went bright and a red light at the front blinked on.

“Oh shit, it still works. Wow.” Jay appeared genuinely happy with this development. His index finger fiddled with the squeaky zoom button then he turned the camera at Mike.

“This is Mike—“

Mike smirked, quirked an eyebrow as he looked at Jay over the lense. “Who are you talking to?”

“Whoever watches this. I might start up a YouTube channel.”

Mike could see Jay smiling behind the camera as he peered through the viewfinder. It was like he was remembering why he wanted to be a filmmaker all that time ago. 

“Introduce yourself.”

“This feels oddly like the opening of a porno,” Mike said. “A very shitty one.”

“Keep your clothes on. Save that for your live performances. See, that’s called incentive.”

“Ahh,” Mike said in mock understanding, before falling into giggly laughter that had him looking down.

“So who are you, Mike Stoklasa?”

“Well.” Mike clasped his fingers together. He looked around as if seeking an explanation. He wasn’t good with this sort of stuff, especially not in front of a camera. Thankfully, Mike spotted his dusty guitar up against the opposite wall. He stood from his chair and fetched it. Jay followed him with the camera all the while, his expression one of genuine focus. Mike sat back down with the instrument in his lap. He tuned it quickly and struck a quick chord that erased the silence and replaced it with a buzz of music that elicited a kind of warmth. 

This felt more way more comfortable.

Mike stilled the strings with the side of his hand. He started picking at the strings, but this time it was light and almost folksy, though the punkish bite and irreverence was still present. Nonetheless, it was playful as Mike sang:

_ “I drink. I smoke. I wake up too late and mope. I lust after men and women alike and chase after dreams, escaped, elusive, in the night. One day I hope to be heading shows but with the way this life is going, who the fuck knows. For now I walk Milwaukee, in hopes some fans will stalk me, but until then I’m just, a bum.” _

Jay was beaming behind the camera, smile wide and toothy and eyes squinted and he looked so open behind the assumed safety of the viewfinder that Mike had to smile too. 

“Did that answer the question?”

Jay hummed, trying to hide his teeth behind his lips again but his smile wouldn’t let him.

“Can I ask who you are, Mr. Camera Man?” Mike said, setting the guitar to the side. “Or is that off limits?”

“I’m not done questioning you. But good try.”

“Okay, okay. Fine.”

“You’re obviously a musician. From what we just heard,” Jay said.

“I’m the lead singer of a baaand, yes,” Mike said, averting his eyes from the shiny, black lense of the camera and sounding sort of shy. Jay was the only one who could make him shy, for some reason, and especially now behind the protection of the camera. 

“Oh, yeah? What’s it called?”

“Best of the Worst. We’re a punk band.”

“Where’d you ever get the idea for that name?”

“Well, uh,” Mike let out a sigh, eyes shifting up to the ceiling and fingers gripping the wood of the chair between his legs. “It’s kind of an inside joke between me and Rich.”

“Who’s Rich?”

Mike smiled, itching his chin. “You know Rich.”

“I’m speaking for them.”

“Oh, yeah. Um. Rich is my drummer. He’s awesome. And his laugh is, something else. Kind of sounds like a hyena dying? Anyways, um, ‘Best of the Worst’ was an inside joke we had when we were first starting out. We sounded like shit and we used to say that we would never be ‘the best’ but we could definitely be the best of the worst bands out there. So. Yeah.”

“You don’t sound too bad, though.”

Mike wasn’t sure if it was the heater’s fault for making his face so hot. 

“Well, thank you.”

And there was this stretch of too long silence until they broke it by snickering together, Mike groaning and refusing to look at the lense like a cyclop’s eye, saying, “Aghh, why are you doing this to me?”

“What?” Jay asked, smiling. “You don’t like being on camera?”

“Okay, but-- it’s not that easy for me, right?” Mike gave a wilting laugh as he looked off at the wall to his right, nervously scratching the back of his neck. “Like, you love filmmaking but making music is more my thing. I’m not used to being on film. I’m not a seasoned veteran, I mean, not like you. I respect that about you. How you’re not scared.”

“You’re scared over this but not when you literally perform in front of crowds of people?”

“Live music is different,” Mike said, looking back at him. “You lose yourself.”

Mike wasn’t staring at the lense but at Jay above the lense, and right here, Mike felt like he was kind of losing himself all over again, like he was just now realizing that he might be able to stare at Jay smiling ear to ear behind a camera for hours if he felt like it. 

“How’d you get that bruise?”

“Oh, this?” Mike lightly touched the orbit of his eye, a little surprised Jay brought it up. But doing it like this made it feel manageable and surprisingly not as awkward. “I, uh. Fought a bear.”

“There are bears in Milwaukee?”

“Yeah, you’ve never seen one?”

“In the city? No.”

“That’s good,” Mike said. “Means I’ve been doing my job and keeping them out of the area.”

They laughed again, and Jay lowered the camera and turned it off, the red recording light fading to black. Mike felt released and breathed out a sigh of relief at having survived. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you that flustered before,” Jay said as he put the camera on the table. “It was kind of amazing.”

“You’re sick,” Mike said. “Taking pleasure in exploiting one of my weaknesses.”

“You have more?”

Mike huffed, averted his eyes moodily. Jay gave a small laugh and ruffled his hair before standing. Mike’s eyes flew open wide, his heart tripping over itself in his chest. He looked up at Jay who was unaware of Mike just now having discovered yet another weakness of his.

They left the boxes to be unpacked later and left Jay’s apartment at eleven pm, scouring the frozen streets for fast food joints still open so close to midnight. The dark streets were illuminated solely in the amber gold of the streetlights, of which gilded the piles of snow bordering the sidewalk.

“Are you not cold?” Mike said, looking over at Jay in his hoodie. “Do you want my jacket?”

The ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of Jay’s mouth, and he didn’t look at Mike, kind of the same way Mike hadn’t been looking at the camera lense. “Not right now. But thanks.”

“If you say so.”

They had turned left after exiting Jay’s apartment building. They usually went straight but knew none of the fast food places down that way would be open. This street was vaguely familiar, bringing back memories for Mike for when he had a reason to come down this way.

“Wait, is that Emherst,” Mike asked, gesturing up ahead. “Going that way, right?”

“Uhh, yeah. I think.”

“Baxter’s used to be on Emherst.”

“Oh yeah, it did, didn’t it? Because the university’s that way.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

There was a degree of awe in their voices.They did not turn onto Emherst, had no reason to, but they peered down its shadowy length for any glimpse of the bar they had first met each other in. It felt like it might be sacred ground, now, if they were to walk down there in search of that boarded up hunk of brick. But it was too cold to meander down memory lane and their stomachs were growling.

“Do you remember the night we first met?” Mike asked once Emherst was behind them.

Something shifted in Jay’s eyes. It was like he was stepping back in time.

“At Baxter’s,” he murmured. “I remember.”

“I feel like it was forever ago. I know it hasn’t been, but it feels like decades, doesn’t it? Time is weird, man.”

“I was so different then,” Jay said. “I was still in school. I was doing tests and shit. That was fucked up.”

Mike smiled. It faded however as he thought back to that night, where he had been crowded with friends and band members that had since left him, and had been on the fast track to developing an adequate alcohol problem. That was when he had started to feel a mess, and thinking back, he wondered how obvious it had been to the people around him, if they had even cared.

“What did you think?” Mike asked. “When you first saw me?”

Any other time, Jay might have tried to be funny about it, said something that was mostly a joke, but this time his gaze was genuine as he answered, “I was afraid of you.”

Mike’s eyes snapped over at him. 

This was the first time he was ever hearing about this and part of the shock was knowing Jay had been feeling identical to what Mike had toward him.

Jay just smirked, shrugged a shoulder. “I felt like I knew what kind of guy you were. You were loud and all the other loud guys I had ever met in my life were terrible. I mean, I grew up with some of them. I thought for sure you were set on making fun of me just so you could laugh to your friends about it, like… I was the butt of your joke.”

Mike found it hard to swallow, this impression of him too much to stomach.

“I—...” Mike took a breath, eyebrows tilting upward to reflect his deepest, vehement sincerity. “Jay, I’m not that kind of guy. You’re not a...  _ joke _ to me _ — _ “

“I know,” Jay said, voice soft as the snow. “I knew that by the end of the night. Sooner than that, maybe. It was… weird. You weren’t ‘that guy’ like I first thought you were. It was almost like I could immediately breathe again because I thought— I was sure you’d protect me from ‘that guy’ because you hated him as much as I did.” Jay smiled, peeking up at Mike. “Maybe I thought of you like a Pokémon or something. I had captured you and now I had something in my pocket to fight for me.”

The temperature was surely in the single digits but Mike was rolling with warmth at that revealed information, something like a confession. He set aside the warmth of his face and the back of his neck and tried a joke instead as he said, “Am I at least a Ghost-type Pokémon?”

“You’re more of a bug _ - _ type.”

“Oh fuck you.” Jay laughed, head thrown back. “Then you’re a normal type.”

“Hey!”

“No, too late. You’re normal. Ha-ha.”

Jay just hummed happily, cleared phlegm from his throat.

“You’re not afraid of me now, right?” Mike needed to know even though an affirmative answer would force his heart out of his ass.

“No,” Jay said. “If anything, I think you’re the one who’s afraid of me.”

Mike smirked, breathed a laugh. “Yeah, pretty much.”

Snow crunched beneath their feet with each step and every now and then, the backs of their hands would brush together. They turned the corner, only to be met with the darkness of a taco joint now empty for at least an hour. Jay sighed an, “Aw damn,” but they continued on to a burger joint sure to be open after remembering that this one actively showed commercials for its ‘Munchie Menu.’

“What did you think about me?” Jay wasn’t looking at Mike. He was looking down at the icy sidewalk ahead of him, chin tucked to his chest in defense against the wind and the hand not in his front pocket picking at the freezing zipper of his hoodie. “When you saw me for the first time at Baxter’s?”

“You scared me too,” Mike said. “You confused me. You were standing against the wall, remember? And everyone around you, the punk crowd, they were all studded out and looking dangerous, and there you were just… completely different. And you were shorter than me, but I didn’t know how much shorter until I had walked up to you, and still I was—… I was petrified.” Mike looked on fondly. “You weren’t like anyone in that room. And I was so interested in you, I didn’t want to leave you alone. And then we started talking and it was so easy, y’know? I just wanted to listen to you talk.”

“Oh,” Jay said, quietly.

Mike looked up at the sky; maybe Venus  _ was  _ up to something tonight because the atmosphere felt different, sort of aromatic and all-encompassing in its intimacy. The world felt on the verge of love and it was stupidly cosmic and secretly exhilarating because Mike and Jay had walked like this before but tonight it felt new as they went down the road with less than an inch between them and their arms bumping each other frequently.

It sort of felt like if they weren’t careful, their fingers would hook together and never let go. 

The burger joint was thankfully open. They stood in line behind some college-age kids currently talking about some kind of essay they were in the middle of. It was horribly uninteresting and Jay must have thought so too because he turned to face Mike with his back to them, and it was strange, that sort of warm pride swelling in Mike’s chest at having Jay so closely facing him, no concern for personal space. 

“What’re you doing?” Mike asked quietly so no one else but Jay could hear. Jay didn’t answer, his eyes flitting up and down Mike’s face before settling finally on his right brow.

“How’s your eye?”

Mike shrugged. “I’ll be okay. I’m sorry. If I made you mad the other night.”

“I wasn’t mad, Mike. That asshole deserved it. You should’ve heard the disgusting shit he was saying. I just…”

Jay didn’t continue. He left it at that, and Mike let it be. 

“I guess the glue worked, then?” Jay asked, tone still sounding unsure.   
“Surprisingly, yeah.”

“It’s flaky right there, though. Here, lemme see.”

Mike bent his head down ever so slightly so Jay could pick at him. Jay scratched the very edge of where the glue had spilled slightly onto his skin and was now beginning to flake. 

Jay was much closer now and Mike could feel his breath on his chin, warm and fleeting. Jay’s eyes shifted from his brow to Mike’s eyes and Mike stared back, and when Jay’s finger slowed and his left hand took hold of the end of Mike’s jacket, Mike took a half step forward and there was something there in Jay’s fattening pupils and Jay sucked his chapped bottom lip into his mouth momentarily to wet it, and--

“ _ Ow, fuck!”  _

Mike flinched hard as Jay’s nail accidentally dipped into his cut, scratching it. Jay took back his hand.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay. Hey, it’s okay,” Mike assured with a soft chuckle when Jay gave him this wide-eyed sort of look like he didn’t believe him. “Still a little sore, that’s all. You didn’t break me, promise.”

“I know that, dick,” Jay said, trying to sound tough but sounding heartbreakingly shaken up. “It’s deeper than you let on. It’ll take a while to heal.”

“Think I’ll have a scar?”

“If you’re lucky. You’d look like a certified badass.”

“As if I didn’t already.”

Jay smirked, rolled his eyes. Mike laughed as Jay turned his back to him, snarling playfully with a nudge of his nose against the crown of Jay’s head and Jay swaying back to lean against his chest in a way that set Mike’s heart alight.

They ate their burgers in a booth by the window. Jay lifted his feet and rested them in Mike’s lap under the table and Mike gave Jay half his fries. They spoke of film and music and all else that came to their minds. They recovered from their latest bout of laughter to look out the window at the end of their meal. The restaurant had emptied out, guaranteeing silence as they watched snowflakes float down from the night sky onto the pavement. 

“Sometimes the snow isn’t so bad,” Jay said thoughtfully. “When you see it like this, it looks like something out of a science-fiction novel. Or a fantasy novel. It looks like magic.”

“I read once,” Mike said, “about a planet where it rains diamonds. It kind of looks like diamonds, doesn’t it? When you squint?”

The cold glass reflected their squinting faces. 

“Earth suddenly becomes that planet, for a little bit. The diamond planet. But then I think, what are the chances there’s an alien out there somewhere light years away, thinking the same thing about a planet they’ve read about that’s mostly water and rains bits of ice, each of them looking nothing like the last.”

“Does it exist?” Jay asked softly, cheek in his hand and the edge of his pinky flirting with the corner of his mouth. “The diamond planet?”

“It could, right? I’d like to think it does.”

“I’d like to think so, too,” Jay said after a beat. “And I guess if we both believe it, then it exists at some capacity. Doesn’t it?”

That was a comforting thought to Mike. 

They ventured back out into the dark, now colder but it was like they were immune as long as they were together. Still, the walk back to Jay’s apartment was much too long and they were walking a few blocks to the nearest bus stop where they could hopefully catch the last bus of the night.

The streets were empty. Cars were few and quick in passing so it was like they had never been there. This piece of Milwaukee turned to a ghost town and suddenly it felt like the world was theirs.

Mike jumped up on a nearby metal-rod fence separating the sidewalk from the huge lot of a gravel supplier. No one told him to get down. No one but Jay saw him. They could do as they pleased, if only for tonight, and Mike walked his feet up the rusted iron rods and climbed over the fence, landing on his feet on the other side.

Neither of them said anything, just looked at each other through the bars.

Venus was somewhere out there, compelling a cosmic shift in Earth’s magnetic field because even this short distance between them felt much too large. Mike and Jay both held a bar in each of their wind-bitten hands and just stared at the other, their height difference demanding Jay to look up and Mike to look down. 

Mike took his hand from one of the bars to tug at Jay’s sleeve, a silent petition to c’mon, come over here, stop being so far away. 

Jay smirked. Mike let his arm go, and it fell limply through the metal bars, back to his side.

Jay took a step backwards. Mike’s soul tugged painfully intense in response. It had Mike flinching toward him, hands squeezing the bars. Jay waited another second before turning on his heel and continuing up the sidewalk without so much as a glance in Mike’s direction.

Mike’s breath quickened, his inhales stuttering in his throat. 

“Hey,” he said, but it came out weaker than he had expected. Jay continued on, and Mike wasted no more time before scaling quickly back over the fence and rushing after Jay. His heavy boots slid on ice and his body struggled to stay upright, and Jay glanced back with a coy little smile as Mike trailed after him stupidly to the empty bus stop at the end of the street.

“If you weren’t there that night,” Mike said as they stood under the bus stop’s snowy awning, “at Baxter’s, we probably wouldn’t have ever met.”

“You’re so sentimental,” Jay murmured, kicking a clot of ice with his shoe.

“Well I have to be when you’re not.”

“I am. Sometimes.” 

Mike breathed a laugh, and Jay stepped in close with a mumble of, “Okay, I’m cold now,” and Mike took him into his jacket and against his chest like he had before, but it was different this time, more tender, sweeter.

They boarded the last bus that night destined for the stop three blocks from Jay’s apartment. They passed the only other passenger sitting at the front and sat near the back of the bus. Mike sat by the window, Jay in the aisle. Their legs were touching, and Mike kind of wanted to put an arm around Jay and keep him warm.

Jay rubbed his hands together, breathed on them. Mike watched.

“Your hands are so tiny.”

“Shut up,” Jay snapped, breathing another puff of hot air against his fingers. “They’re not that tiny. You’re just huge.”

“I don’t know if ‘tall’ is synonymous with ‘huge.’”

“‘Synonymous,’ huh?” Jay smiled up at him. “Big words.”

“Some would call me a poet.”

“Do they?”

“What do you call me?”

“I don’t.”

“Heartless bastard. Absolutely heartless.” 

Jay laughed. 

They decided to settle the argument of how much smaller Jay’s hands were by measuring their hands against the other’s. They lined the heels of the palms up, pressed their palms together.

“See?” Jay said. “You are huge.”

He wasn’t lying; Mike’s fingers extended past the tips of Jay’s a good inch. Jay’s hands weren’t overly small, just proportional to his already small physique. It was endearing, in a weird way. 

In the messy puzzle of Mike’s mind, as cluttered and confusing as Rich’s toolbox, something clicked. His hand pressed against Jay’s felt the same as walking into an obscure place and remembering it from your childhood, or smelling something undefinable that reminded you of your walk home at dusk on a cool day in September twelve years ago. 

It was a full-body experience lasting only a fleeting second, heart-achingly intense. 

“Your hands are always so cold,” Mike whispered. “Why are they so cold all the time?”

“It’s freezing outside.”

“But I feel like even outside of that they’re cold.”

Jay mumbled incoherently but dismissively, and Mike unzipped his jacket again and brought Jay’s hand into the once-contained warmth. He slid Jay’s hand under his bicep and sandwiched it there against his side. Jay gave a single, hard shiver and slid a bit closer, forehead brushing Mike’s leather sleeve.

“The moon,” Jay guessed as Mike’s object of focus when Mike stared up and out the window.

“I went over to Laura’s today,” Mike said, “and she was saying something about the placement of Venus. Trying to see if I can see it.”

Jay leaned on him and joined Mike in looking out of the window. The fingers under Mike’s arm twitched and drew into a fist, fingernails scraping lightly at his clothed side. Mike hummed shakily, feeling lightheaded for a moment. 

“She’s into all of that astrology and psychic stuff,” Jay said.

“Whatever. All of that shit’s fake, anyway. I could probably do something psychic-y. Easily.”

“Then do it.”

“Fine. Gimme your hand.”

Jay looked unhappy with the thought of having to take his hand from the admittedly warm inside of Mike’s jacket. But Mike made it better by taking it in his hands and rubbing it warm before turning his palm up and stretching out Jay’s fingers flat. 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna read your palm,” Mike said, matter of factly.

Jay smiled, returning his head ever so slightly to rest on Mike’s shoulder. “Okay.”

“Your life line is… this one.” Mike looked up when Jay snickered. “What? That’s not it?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

“It’s this one. Wait-- yeah, that one. And your love line is, uh… this one.” Mike stroked a calloused thumb down a random line of Jay’s palm. “Okay, let’s see.  _ Ah-ha!  _ You’ll be married once. His name will be Travis and you’ll have three kids— two boys, one girl— and he’ll be a lawyer and you’ll live in Los Angeles.”

“You’re so bad at this,” Jay said. “His name will be Steven, and he’ll have two kids, both girls. They’ll be from a previous marriage. And he’ll be an accountant, not a lawyer.”

“I got the part about Los Angeles right, then?” Mike said. “One out of five isn’t bad.”

“Terrible,” Jay said. “Absolutely terrible. I think I’m a better palm reader than you.”

“Yeah?”

Jay’s fingers closed to trap Mike’s, holding loosely and they both stared at their joined hands with a sort of surprise, but neither of them took their hand back. It would be a sin, a fucking finger to the universe if they did, or that’s how it felt. Their hands were warm together, anyway, and this touch of their skin was new and it was so perfect.

“He’ll talk about his high school glory days,” Jay whispered, still looking at their hands. “My husband. Future husband. He was the quarterback and everyone thought he was straight and sometimes I think he still misses it— living a lie.” In the light coming through the frosty window, Jay’s skin glittered gold, his eyes silver with moonlight. “And I’m a bad dad, because I didn’t have many positive male influences growing up and now I think I’m fucking the kids up even when they still feel like strangers to me, like  _ his  _ kids and not mine _. _ And my husband, he doesn’t like movies. He likes shitty TV shows with canned laughter. And I’ll hate it, and I’ll wish I was twenty years younger and back in Milwaukee. And he can feel it, and he’ll ask me about my past. He’ll ask me about my friends. I’ll say,  _ ‘What _ friends?’ and he’ll say, ‘What about this one? In this little picture I found in your wallet?’ What was he doing in my wallet, I’ll think, but I’m a hypocrite because I go through his too.” Jay’s fingers twitched around Mike’s, featherlight and distracted, and Mike melted, heat crawling from under his collar, up the back of his neck and to his scalp. The air felt fragile, like spun glass woven into an intricate tapestry they made together.

“‘Him?’ I’ll say, and then I’ll laugh. ‘He wasn’t a friend. He was a nuisance.’ But then I’ll start to go quiet, and I’ll say, ‘I don’t have a word for him.’ And he’ll say, ‘Tell me about him and I’ll find the word.’ And I’ll know he’ll try because he always knows what to say. I stuttered when I first met him. I had a rough stutter as a kid but he won’t know that because I don’t tell him things like that. But he’ll talk so eloquently it’ll be painful, and he’ll sound prerecorded and fake and I’ll try to convince myself that I like it, that I like the order and cleanliness but I won’t. I never have.” Jay’s smile reappeared, slow to grace his face and gentle as he looked far off. His fingers tightened around Mike’s and Mike answered with his own squeeze, and Jay’s mouth twitched upward at the edges, his eyes going soft. “So I’ll describe him, the one in the black leather jacket, the one with damaged hair because he dyes it so fucking much. I’ll say, ‘He was… the one I could show any song I had found to and he’d know it already. Or if he didn’t, he’d take it in like a stray cat. He got all my movie references and laughed at all my stupid jokes. He would get me drunk and make Milwaukee new for me with all the places he’d take me that I’d never seen before. He was the one who understood all the satire and nuance of  _ Starship Troopers _ without me having to explain it to him. 

“‘He was the one who once beat a guy up for me.’” Jay’s expression turned from one full of flattered pride to one much more worried. He shook his head. “‘I’d never seen him like that. Bloody. It scared me. Not  _ him  _ but… having had a part in hurting him. He was protecting  _ me _ . He was the one who always protected me. And it never got easier, seeing him hurt. I couldn’t stand it. He was the one who made my heart ache when he’d so much as blister his fingers after playing guitar for too long. He was the one... who knew how I was feeling without me having to tell him. He was the one I wish I had known all my life. And my husband, the man I thought I could convince myself to love, but who I feel nothing for, he won’t have the word— finally— because there isn’t one and there are too many.”

A ding sounded throughout the bus as it rolled to a stop. The driver announced that this was the end of the line. The doors opened and a cold wind raced inside and shook them awake from this half-imagined, half-true scenario. Jay snatched his hand backed from Mike’s and bolted up from his seat. 

Mike was still stuck in his seat. His brain was short-circuiting as he tried to process all of what Jay had just said in almost a trance-like state. Mike watched, mouth agape, as Jay hurried down the aisle and off the bus without so much of a glance back at him.

“End of the line,” the driver said again. 

Mike found his feet and pushed himself forward, racing down the steps and onto the snowy pavement. Jay was already far ahead of him. His hood was up and his hands were stuffed in the front pockets of his hoodie. He was hunched down a little, shoulders rolled forward, as he walked against the wind. 

“Jay.” 

Jay didn’t look back. He walked faster, shoulders rising with tension. There was that horrific tug at Mike’s soul again and he was literally jogging after Jay without any regard for the ice on the sidewalk, no concern of falling.

“Jay,” Mike called out as he closed the gap between them, slowing when he had finally caught up. “ _ Jay _ .”

Jay stopped in his tracks, pivoted on his heel. “What?” he snapped. He was shaking. 

The wind had brought a darkening pink to color his cheeks. Snowflakes like microscopic diamonds landed on his dark eyelashes before being blinked away. Mike, panting, stepped closer and his heart broke as he saw a shimmer of mortified embarrassment and perhaps fear at Mike’s reaction reflected in Jay’s eyes. 

There was so much Mike wanted to say but he wasn’t good with words at times like this. 

So Mike leaned down and kissed him. 

It was a barely-there touch, gentler than the wind. Mike furrowed his brow deeply at the first touch of their lips together, this harsh expression his first reaction when experiencing the tsunami-sized wave of too many emotions and stimuli all at once: the spinning of his stomach, the rush of warm blood through his body, the racing of his heart echoing in his eardrums and shaking his ribcage, the smell of Jay flooding his senses, the taste of him seeping into his mouth, the feel of him and his every breath and twitch.

Oh.

_ Oh.  _

It all made sense suddenly and Mike’s previous denseness melted away as he succumbed to the honest truth he had been too anxious to face.

_ You love him. You love him so much. _

And Mike’s once focused expression went lax as together they began to move their lips. 

Jay kissed back, with his eyes closed and his hand holding the lapel of Mike’s jacket. They were slow and careful at first as they tested the waters of romantic intimacy never before tried with each other. Every move of their lips was deeper than the last and their breathing became hard as desperation dawned over them. 

They invented this.

All the other kisses he’d had up until now were hollow, Mike understood that now. Because all the rest of them had lacked  _ this _ , something elusive and unnameable and that something was in Jay,  _ was  _ Jay. 

Jay’s tongue slid into Mike’s mouth and against his. Mike trembled. He pushed Jay up against a nearby brick wall and Jay breathed out a  _ hmmph!  _ in answer, hands now at Mike’s hair, threaded in it and holding too tight as he compelled Mike forward and further into his mouth. 

Jay’s teeth were getting in the way, but it was perfect. Mike’s bottom lip throbbed where Jay’s teeth had nicked him, but Mike was pressing further into it, begging Jay to bite him again.

Jay’s mouth was so wet, and his tongue was soft beneath a sheen of sticky saliva. God, he was delicious. Jay was the most delicious thing Mike had ever tasted and there would never not be a day where Mike didn’t crave this. 

They had been starving for years, and only now did they realize it.

They pulled apart reluctantly, only spurred on by their need to breathe. Their foreheads pressed together and a ghostly body of frozen breath formed between their parted lips, their eyes closed as Mike stroked Jay’s cheekbones with his thumbs and Jay tangled his fingers tight in Mike’s hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr: @marasamoon


End file.
